What Chris created is a group by the way, which is different from a page on Facebook. It's probably good to have both, and it's important to use them correctly as I have seen examples of it being done wrong.
The KISS principle applies here in choosing not to post messages to the Facebook group. The "groups" feature is misleadingly named to suggest that they might be useful for discussions, but messages posted to Facebook groups do not result in notifications to the subscribers. Two places to have to post messages can't be a good thing. So even apart from the fact that only a certain percentage of people are on Facebook, the mailing list and RSS are a better way to keep updated than a facebook group. That said, groups are really useful because the owner of the group can issue a message to all subscribers. This is especially appropriate for notifying members about events. Events on Facebook are useful because people can manage their RSVP, and at the same time advertise the event to their friends unobtrusively in their profile/feed. So I would suggest that the best practice for FB groups is to notify users of events. The group should indicate that discussion takes place on the mailing list, and if it is a setting, it should even disable discussion to prevent frustration when no one responds (because no one is notified of new discussion messages). In addition to a group, a facebook "page" can also be good. Many people use these as a "badge" of support, and if an event is posted it will show up in their feed. Messages sent from groups go to inbox and email, but it helps to have the event in the feed as well. One reason for this is that FB does not really notify that well when there are new inbox messages, and the email copy is often sent with a delay (sometimes too late!). So having the event in the feed is a good kind of redundancy, and in practice is not annoying, especially since it only happens once or twice a month. On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Chris Devers <[email protected]> wrote: > JFDI. > > Nevermind, I just did for you: > > http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=131595281237 > > (And nevermind the fact that it's been years since I've been to a > meeting, eh? :-) > > I'm completely happy to share admin access to the group, I just wanted > to get it stubbed out so that people could sign up for it, meetings > could be posted, etc. > > > -- > Chris Devers > just might go to another meeting again someday > maybe after the kids go off to college perhaps > > _______________________________________________ > Boston-pm mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm > _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
