Why do users like Facebook so much?

[JamesBrown]

I'm not a big Facebook user or fan, but I've noticed in our niche that some very big groups have developed in a very short time. Groups with tens of thousands of members around one interest, it took us 5 years to get 10,000 members, they manage that in months.

We don't seem to be suffering as a result of Facebook and even though our forums are paid, they are growing faster than ever. Of course we are a much better 'resource' than Facebook (at the moment; if they ever give their Facebook groups a forum structure it will be a different story)

Why do Facebook groups pick up so many people so fast, and what can we and xenForo do about it?

 

[TheBoss]

Beats me , I hate it with a burning passion.
I am an Admin of FB Group with 25,000 + members and trying to convince them to post their questions or look for answers in our forum is like talking to plank of wood. As an Admin I see the same questions getting asked 20 times a day and it drives me nutts... I just put it down to bone idle laziness & TBH I have stopped answering the questions that are repeated over and over again..

 

[rafass]

Average of active users in Facebook: 1.560 Millions.
Average of active users in Forums: [ ? ] You guess..
---
Is obvious social media are doing good things. Forums have to offer the same user experience.
otherwise they will simply disappear. Well, it seems that already started a while.

 

[BoostN]

For Facebook users, it's the ease of access to post. The users can keep everything contained to one application. Groups, Pages, etc are all easily accessible right from their phone.

As far as the use of groups, it's always the same questions and of course no organization. Facebook groups are more of a instant answer approach for users.

Why browse to a forum when you're already on the Facebook app and can pop in your favorite group and get an instant notification right on your phone?

I've got a newer forum that "competes" with a group right now, the group is winning.. but the forum is doing ok for being new.

 

[wedgar]

I'm not a big Facebook user or fan, but I've noticed in our niche that some very big groups have developed in a very short time. Groups with tens of thousands of members around one interest, it took us 5 years to get 10,000 members, they manage that in months.

We don't seem to be suffering as a result of Facebook and even though our forums are paid, they are growing faster than ever. Of course we are a much better 'resource' than Facebook (at the moment; if they ever give their Facebook groups a forum structure it will be a different story)

Why do Facebook groups pick up so many people so fast, and what can we and xenForo do about it?

Only one Facebook and availability to sign up for many special interest groups.

The advantage of the XenForo forums is the ability to keep closer control over items in the forum.

 

[MQK8]

Beats me , I hate it with a burning passion.
I am an Admin of FB Group with 25,000 + members

I'm just curious, if you hate FB so much, why are you an admin of a group? I can't be sure but I believe it's against FB's terms to have a group for the purpose of driving traffic/members to your forum, I mean it only makes sense.

 

[MQK8]

I'm not a big Facebook user or fan, but I've noticed in our niche that some very big groups have developed in a very short time. Groups with tens of thousands of members around one interest, it took us 5 years to get 10,000 members, they manage that in months.

We don't seem to be suffering as a result of Facebook and even though our forums are paid, they are growing faster than ever. Of course we are a much better 'resource' than Facebook (at the moment; if they ever give their Facebook groups a forum structure it will be a different story)

Why do Facebook groups pick up so many people so fast, and what can we and xenForo do about it?

My take it that people love the almost instant gratification of interaction between people they know and don't know, we live in a "I want it now" kind of world. FB provides that and in my opinion is here to stay. I mean there's no other place you can communicate with someone across the world in a moments notice. For example, I converse with a friend via FB that lives on a boat in Mylasia in the middle of the ocean, no forum can give me that. Being in the entertainment business, FB allows me to converse with bands, headline acts just moments before they are to walk out on stage, can't find that nowhere else either. So I'm assuming these are some of the reasons people love FB so much, it's why I do.

 

[Glenn Kilpatrick]

is like talking to plank of wood

Hit the nail on the head there mate. Im convinced The general Facebook user is of a lower IQ than a forum user. Like 2 short planks the old saying goes. I can say with 100% certainty that a large percentage of Facebook users are not aware that the internet extends outside Facebook.

This is the world in which we now live. Soon we will be running down the street shouting "like" at our friends that we once used to stop and speak to.

 

[tommydamic68]

@Boosterz hit it on the nose - ease of use and its MOBILE friendly folks! No computer or laptop needed...The majority of the world lives from their phone.

 

[Bram]

An average xenforo forum is more mobile friendly than FB is

 

[Daniel Hood]

An average xenforo forum is more mobile friendly than FB is

Nonsense. Please link me to one forum that allows me to instantly ask my friends a question? Link me to a forum where I can easily upload a photo from my phone's gallery.

---
As to the original topic:

Facebook is great for staying in contact with people you are close to on a daily basis. It's terrible for organizing content.
A forum is great for organizing content, generally on a specific topic, and carrying on conversations that need to be found later.

Facebook and forums are not really comparable. If anything, compare a forum to Twitter. Twitter is based on following people interested in similar topics (much like forums) though it has more of a real life, close friends/family, atmosphere as well.

 

[Rusty Snippets]

Watch the movie Idiocracy for the answer.

 

[Claudio]

People just want to ask and receive a reply, they don't care where they post it or if it's organized. If people have to create a thread they will lost two seconds to find the forum, click the button and be redirected to the editor where they have to post another button.

On Facebook you have to press one button only.

 

[TheBigK]

People love anything that has lots of photos uploaded by people. Trust me, Zuck wasn't being stupid when he paid billions to acquire Instagram. People uploading their personal photos is what makes Facebook successful in attracting other people.

 

[rafass]

Forums usually have moderators acting like the sheriff's of the town, there are tons of strict rules, there are warnings, bans, semi-bans, penalties, restrictions, etc. Looks like:



you have think carefully before do anything.
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Social media usually is more friendly, plus there are tons or girls. looks like:

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I don't like to much facebook, but is a great tool to meet new friends and find people, customers, etc... everyone is there posting "selfies" and stupid things.

 

[Alpha1]

Facebook is much more addictive through the instant gratification functionality. Forum software has not yet evolved to the same era as social media. Asking a Facebook user to post on a forum is akin to asking a mobile phone user to fax you. Indeed like talking to a plank of wood.
Mind that the basics of forum functionality is still the same as 15 years ago. That's a generation gap right there. It will get worse unless forums evolve beyond fax machine era approach.

And this is why I prefer Xenforo. It seems to be heading in the right direction. Even though we need a very large step in that direction. I hope that with xf2 the devs will have fully thinked outside of the box instead of an improvement of vbulletin type approaches.

 

[Snog]

Facebook is much more addictive through the instant gratification functionality

You hit the nail on the head with this.

While facebook is good for quick little blurbs and replies like "Oh I'm in with that", it's not an in depth discussion system. Forums on the other hand are for the most part intended for in depth discussions on the topic for the site.

The two can work hand in hand to develop a strong user base, but a forum usually ends up with better search rankings because of the content.

 

[Alpha1]

Actually, most of the facebook content is never indexed. Even if your website is the top forum in your niche then it will still be virtually impossible to beat Facebook content. If you friend all the icons, experts and trendsetters in your nice and build a friends list of thousands then you will likely find a lot of content, information, discussion that will never reach your forum. Simply because the crowd of hundreds of millions will not be using forums. Forums are partially deprecated. This is the problem that needs to be resolved before it gets much worse.

Btw:
Facebook, qq, vk and other microblogging playforms do not need google indexing. Billions of people search within microblogging sites. No need for google at all.

 

[Snog]

Actually, most of the facebook content is never indexed.

And this is the problem with Facebook.

Using the stats for the US Facebook user base, they have around 151,000,000 users. That excludes about 100,000,000 adult users in the United States.

Those 100 million users have no way of finding the info on Facebook. That's why forums and Facebook could work hand in hand.

I'm having this exact argument with a group in our area now. They have a Facebook group page and insist it is available to everyone when it's not. And it's not even indexed in Google so a good portion of the population can't find it or see it's content.

 

[Alpha1]

True, but it's also the other way around. If it's not on Facebook then a fair amount of the 150 million people will not find it. There should be a solution to this because Facebook holds most of those users without leaking to forums. Though in general Facebook disallows apps that send users away from Facebook. But something like that is needed so that we can attract users through Facebook and Google.