What is the role of facebook?
Networks and connections - life is about who you know. Facebook is a fantastic tool for building and maintaining contacts – however how will it feature in our attempt to provide real time content and to develop our web presence – especially when it is essentially playing catch up when it comes to the ‘real time’ web.
I think it has a few minor roles to play:
- We have groups for each of our sections / Music / News / Film etc.. and these can be used to inform people of the best way to become involved in the paper.
Do you have Facebook?
- Facebook can also be used as a ‘crowd sourcing’ tool – which will prove invaluable in our attempt to provide a more relevant and pertinent news experience.
- We can announce upcoming stories for either the website or newspaper and generate interest – in many ways it will play a similar role to Twitter – but not to the same degree.
- It provides another way in which people can contact us and i think this is only a good thing – the less barriers we have to people providing us with information – the more likely it is we will learn something interesting
- Because of the size and nature of the network is has the potential to help disseminate information very quickly, however I don’t think it has a proven track record when it comes to being used in this fashion.
In all honesty I am wary of the limited potential of Facebook, yet I do not think it can be discounted – any tool that provides another means to connect to an audience must add some value to our tool set. – It certainly cannot detract. Although I am curious to know what other people think. Do you perceive it is such a limited way as I do or is there a world of potential there that I am blind to? – Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe to the feed for the blog.
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Tom – You make a valid point, but assuming that twitter falls into the same category of 'Social Networking Site' as facebook is an easy one to make and I wouldn't neccessarily agree. Twitter is what you make of it, but has been designed and used in a very different way to facebook from the beginning
I think the key to our sucess next year requires both using facebook and twitter in the right was to maximise the potential that they both have. Twitter will *never* be as big as facebook, but it doesn't need to be for it to be considered a sucess. Facebook also made the mistake of trying to copy twitter's style (after it's failed takeover bid) which if they try similar attitudes could be the beginning of their downfall.
Facebook has become the new Myspace, but Twitter will never be the new Facebook. Frankly IMO they both do a good job, but would fail to do so when one tries to the up the other (something I hope Twitter would never try). The biggest loosers from this one-upmanship content? The very people they are trying to ensnare.
As long as the people charged with keeping a tab on the Facebook groups/pages attached to Redbrick actually do so, basically by sending out regular messages r.e. meetings, interesting future articles, then Facebook becomes a very useful tool.
Plus, the second point I'd emphasise is that most people are on Facebook, regularly keeping in touch with it- on the other hand, if I've ever mentioned Twitter to a group of people, then I get mixed reactions- some have accounts and think it's the best thing since sliced bread, others started one but didn't get beyond publishing statuses, didn't see the use for it and gave up whilst others have just preferred to stick to Facebook.
Twitter isn't, then, the most popular of social networking sites, but is growing in membership which has in fact encouraged Facebook to make changes (the more linear structure to the main page, for example). If Twitter does continue to grow, then Facebook might make further changes to combat Twitter- more than likely, improving their audio capabilities which are weak at best right now.
Hope this makes some sense.