Facebook - Star Wars: Forums at FB

[snoopy5]

Hi,

I am sitting here in Europe. Germany. Late evening. Watching TV. Then the break for advertisement is coming. With a Facebook ad.

Facebook is advertising its new options for special interests. Organised in forums by subject. I immediately logged into my new facebook account, but could not find it. According to the advertisement, you can click on a link within your userprofile. At least that was looking like it for a FB- newbee.

I know that Zuckerberg announced earlier this year that they want to focus now on community forums, but I am surprised that this is going so fast and that they make expensive advertisement for it. WTF....

In the advertisement they even address the main criticism about FB, that the content on FB is garbage.

So we are heading towards tough times...

What do you think?

 

[Bionic Rooster]

In the advertisement they even address the main criticism about FB, that the content on FB is garbage.

At least they recognize they are garbage. Whether they try to change or not probably won't work because of the garbage content providers. They will not change after years of habitually posting crap, and any changes made to FB will only provide the same useless content.

 

[snoopy5]

At least they recognize they are garbage. Whether they try to change or not probably won't work because of the garbage content providers. They will not change after years of habitually posting crap, and any changes made to FB will only provide the same useless content.

I do think you are deadly wrong with this. As a forum owner you should know that users behaviour depends on forum structure and forum management.

If FB offers a meaningful forum structure, the postings in this forum structure will have sooner or later good content. Postings in these FB forums from the same people will be better than postings of the same people in different areas of FB.

The same way as you behave differently in the office vs in the church vs on a party.

This why we do care at all about marketing our forums on facebook. We want to have these users to generate good content with them in our forums.

But if FB is offering the same and these users even do not need to register for the FB forums at all, why the hell do you think they will be interested in your forums with less traffic and less users?

 

[Bionic Rooster]

why the hell do you think they will be interested in your forums with less traffic and less users?

Quality experience is the simple answer. FB and those who post there do so because they don't really care about quality connectivity with those who prefer hit and run social content.

 

[snoopy5]

and of course you believe that you are the only one who can provide quality experience? and billions of FB users are too dump to produce quality content in other forums? Really?

 

[Bionic Rooster]

and of course you believe that you are the only one who can provide quality experience? and billions of FB users are too dump to produce quality content in other forums? Really?

Not at all, take this forum as one example of many where most users provide quality content. I think the word you're looking for is dumb not dump.
Thanks for your input though I don't buy any of it.

 

[ENF]

hit and run social content.

Good description. That's really accurate to describe the short snips and clickbait trash that comes from SNS.

 

[RobinHood]

I am surprised that this is going so fast and that they make expensive advertisement for it. WTF....

They mean business when it comes to groups these days, they even changed their mission statement over it.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/22/bring-the-world-closer-together/

There's tough times for new forum admins ahead. If I was wanting to start a forum with only basic message board features and without access to a potential user base to register straight after launch, then I'd probably use one of the free options these days. Facebook groups, Discord or one of the other community software packages that comes with native mobile apps for a true cross platform experience. It depends if the project was something I wanted to grow and scale for the long haul, or if I just want to quickly connect a load of like minded people as fast as possible with access to the best tools possible.

The problem is, what do you do when your group scales and how much do you value owning your own content or wish for your content to get indexed by search engines? That's where classic forums are preferred so you can monetise, then take time and money investing in custom features and add ons. But what if Facebook start doing revenue share with admins when the groups get big enough? Then it makes it even harder to move away. And lots of group owners don't really care about SEO if they can get the users from Facebooks existing network with a quick search and one click join.

Facebook definitely provide the best core experience for small groups starting out, something that's severely lacking with forums. And now they're building tools to help them scale and become internal big boards.

They have a good mobile app
They have truly instant private and group messaging between users that works well on desktop and through the mobile app for when you're out and about.
They have a better notification system.
They have a decent events and invite system.
They have video upload to any post.

These are all things that keep pulling me and my cohort away from from forums and to these other solutions. To us, these features are a large part of what contributes to a 'quality' community experience, you have to look at it holistically. Not just focus on the fact that it's not the best for long form content or the fact that it doesn't have a rich text editor. Much of the time we don't need that and the other features more than make up for it.


You're sticking your head in the sand if you think that all of the content is low quality hit and run. It may be on public pages, but not in many groups. With 2 billion monthly active users there's enough quality content to keep you reading for decades depending on your interests if you join the right groups. More so when they finally fix their awful search, another edge that forums still have.

 

[snoopy5]

@RobinHood

I totally agree. Facebook is so big with so many users. If they decide to change something, this will get really ugly for us forum-owners. This is why I title the thread title with "star wars". The dark side (the empire) is coming into our territory now and they have much more powerful weapons than we have!

Many here seem to oversee what is it all about to start and grow a community forum and later to maintain it and keep it active. What are the main drivers? In the order of importance during the life-cycle:

1. You need users and you have to find a way to get them to know that you exist -> SEO & marketing
2. You need to make the registration process as easy as possible, without risking spammers
3. You need users who are willing top post. As often as possible -> appear as an active and worthwhile community to join
4. You need to have a forum-structure which is a good compromise between "easy to find something" and "easy to post/upload"
5. You need to have a feature setup and technical ability to keep the interaction at a high level, motivate users to come back and get many referrals. Nowadays above all for smartphones.

So now lets see how this turns out for someone who runs a XF-forum vs. a FB-forum:

ad #1

If you just look at all the questions forum owners have to get better SEO. The hardest thing is the SEO and marketing stuff. Without that, you are nothing. Nice forum but no users and nobody who cares about your forum content. This #1 is for free for Facebook forums. The users are already there. Billions of users! Every day! How do you want to beat that?

ad #2

FB-forum admins do not have to care about that. All users and non-users are already registered. No additional work or barrier for someone to join the FB-forum. This problem simply does not exist for FB-forums. How do you want to beat that? Why should any FB user join your XF-forum, if he has to register for that again, if he gets the same content already at FB without doing anything for it? How do you want to beat that?

And do not tell me FB has not the same quality content. This is ********. If there are niches now, which are not good enough yet, wait for 2 years and they are better then you are. Simply because they have more users to improve the quality of the content each day.

ad #3

Ever tried to motivate your users to post more on your forums? Good luck! The exact same users on some of my forums post like 20x per day in different FB groups really quality content. But in my XF-forum? Nothing. Only lurkers. I am sure that there is some kind of psychological reason for this, but I do not know for sure why. If I ask them, they even do not know why. So do not underestimate this hidden "posting power" of FB facebook users inside their FB-world. How do you want to beat that?

ad #4

This was in the past the main and maybe the only advantage that forums like xenforo had over FB. This is now history. As soon as FB starts really looking seriously into the FB-forum idea, they are smart enough and have enough money and programmers to change that within a few months. So expect in the future (sooner as we would like it) that the new FB-forums will be at least as good in this regard as a XF-forum. So how do you want to beat that?

ad #5

XF does not have an app. Simple as that. And I do not know whether any kind of forum software company will be able to offer something, that can roughly compete with what FB offers regarding apps and other technical features to push the interaction over smartphones etc.

Looking at all those 5 points this sound s very negative. But it does not help us to dream on and put the head in the sand. We have to be aware what the strength of FB et alii is to be able to compete on that level. I am not a FB fan. Until last week, I even was not registered with them. Only for my Forum I start now to open a FB account and try to get some FB users to my forum.

But we have to come up with smarter ideas than the old phrases "content is king" and "FB is just a collection of stupid postings". This behavior is like kindergarten and shows that we do NOT have an answer yet to this threat.

We better work faster to find some ideas. The time is running. If we wait until FB-forums are good enough and big enough, it will be too late.