Dear Wise Flist...

[ash48]

Yep.. I'm back again seeking advice on other fandom places to hangout.

I'm not really a Twitter gal and I don't think Tumblr is for me either. So now I'm considering Facebook. I've had no interest in getting a Facebook before now because, to be honest, real life stuff really doesn't interest me so much - except in real life of course. (and that's not to say I don't like hearing about YOUR rl stuff.. it's just I don't really want to follow rl friends to hear what they're up to...)

So.

I'm thinking a fandom Facebook page. Where I might most stuff a bit like on LJ. (vids etc. maybe occasional personal stuff) My thinking is this: the thing I enjoy most about fandom is connecting with other people who are into the same thing. Chatting, sharing creative works etc. But I realise that not everyone is on LJ. In fact I keep being told "I don't do LJ because it's too complicated". Which I agree with. Until you get to know it that is.

So. I'm curious if anyone else does this. Have a fandom named Facebook? I'm pretty keen to keep my RL and fandom life separate - mainly because I would hate for my students to ever find me.

I have a very limited knowledge of Facebook so I don't really know how it works. Though I understand you can create a community as well as a personal page. Ack! I am so internet challenged!

Advice?

(and um... if I did get a FB is it easy to find like minded peeps?)

Sorry for the lame questions..

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

I'm finding myself laughing because the reason I clicked on your post is because I was curious to see how people explained fandom working there. I don't have an account myself so I'm of no help in this dept.

I have to say the general responses don't surprise me. FB has, so far as I can tell, been best for real life engagements -- for locating people and perhaps organizing events or sending out periodic "I'm still alive" notices to people who'd forgotten you exist. And since you want to keep RL things separate both for work and personal reasons, I don't know that the upside will exceed the downside.

For example, celebrities have started to use Facebook so that they can be found and because it's easier to start, maintain and track their followers than a standalone website is. Being able to show off followers is, I am convinced, becoming an important coin of the trade in terms of employment opportunities, so I expect we're going to continue seeing a lot of Twitter and FB pages being started for celebs or media types (as well as corporations and projects). However, I feel it also suits the fact that these people rarely have much to say because one does not go to FB to read essays or get anything other than short news briefs, and to my mind that's already served even more conveniently by Twitter which does not, at least, give you relentless status updates or try to maneuver you into playing games or doing other "revenue enhancing" things. At least on Twitter you have to be saying something even if it's inane.

Others have already pointed out the privacy concerns, which is a central reason why DW is my main site. Unfortunately, since you're looking for more activity than you're finding on LJ I can't recommend it. It's a superior platform and keeps being developed in helpful ways. But while I'm seeing more activity there it's very low compared to LJ and I find that my fandom-related reading there is around 20%. I would agree with others that Tumblr and Twitter seem to be the growing fandom sites. I think the reason they're growing is because a lot of fandom has always been the skim and chat side, and they better serve that sort of sporadic attention. LJ has always accommodated it, but it's better served for long-form content (and DW, with its much longer posting and commenting limits, better still). I enjoy the social nature of fandom here but when it comes down to it, I want to have my time served by meaty content and I'm not likely to find that anywhere else.

I think in time the AO3 may serve as a good base for that, but as it's both still in beta and has years to go yet in being able to host both art and vids, expand its bookmarking system, etc. I think it'll be the option of our next decade if it's one at all.

[ash48.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this. I have to say I was surprised but the overwhelming negativity toward the place. I mean, I know it has it's haters but because so many people seem to have a facebook I thought it was accommodating fannish activities. But from what I can gather by the response here it isn't.

This primarily started because of my Bobby vid being posted to Jim's facebook. The girl who posted it said I should look at getting one. It also made me aware that my vids are sometimes posted overthere and I really have no way of tracking that. Not that that really concerns me because I know once I put a vid on YT it essentially is no longer mine.
With the likes of Tumblr, where you can embed vids, it's even harder to keep track. I had a girl tell me she posted my Meta Song vid on Tumblr and told me how many "notes" it had received. I didn't have any idea what that meant - until I started investigating.

I'm fairly happy with the activity here - I rarely have the time to keep up with everything as it is, so I'm not really sure I need another place to hangout anyway.

I really like the set up here and the ability to post a variety of things - not to mention the sense of community.
xx

[yourlibrarian]

Yes, I think once vids became embeddable the genie was out of the bottle in being able to track an audience to them. There are still people who will repost fic, and I was intrigued to discover recently that at one time people expected archivists to come and find material rather than submitting it themselves, so that was even an expectation in certain fandoms. However, I think it's much less common than it is for vids (or even more so, art). One thing's for sure though, chances are it's vids people really enjoy that tend to travel :)