The Right Venue for Online Discussion?
This blog? My Facebook groups? A couple of very pointed but sensible comments to my recent post made one thing clear: that this blog is where I should look to spur active conversations, not my Facebook groups. I am frankly confused, and would like to share two comments from yesterday’s post.
From Ian Wilson:
Why not just keep discussion
centered on this blog? I am sure most of the people signed up to the
facebook groups also read your blog.Right now there does not seem to be any easy way to manage
discussions around various web sites…so
having them all in 1 place, your place, seems like the easiest way to
keep the conversation flowing, imho.Facebook is becoming more and more cluttered with spam daily, so
much so that its cost of use is getting too steep for me, I cant find
the signal for the noise. Does anyone else find that?
From Michael Sharon:
I completely agree with Ian.
Encouraging conversation around your primary and most visited community
- although it’s in some respects a limited channel - is far more useful
than trying to stimulate discussion within multiple sub-communities
based around related topics on sites which have higher barriers to
entry.It may not be your fault that there hasn’t been enough discussion in
those groups, perhaps it’s simply that the conversation and the
platform that you have here is enough for most people, most of the
time.You mention fomenting an active dialogue which reminded me of this
article about the User Generated Content myth over at Publishing 2.0
(link neutered! google it). I think the reality of the situation is
that encouraging an active dialogue within any one of your groups would
require a non-trivial investment in attention - which you’ve chosen
(unsurprisingly) to spend at your main site here. For me, Facebook is
less useful for high value, public dialogues simply because content
within the group is not searchable (through Google or FB). If the
intention is for the conversation to be private or limited to group
members only, then I think FB is the tool for you, otherwise, keep it
in the blogosphere.
I’ve got to say, Ian and Michael make a lot of sense. But as a test, I am going to run questions in both venues and see what happens. But after reflecting on it a bit, I do think they are right as my blog has far greater reach than my Facebook groups, and the goal of posing questions and stimulating discussion among my readers is to cast a wide net. So in order to raise a new question I had posed on my IA Capital Partners group to a broader audience, I am reproducing it for my blog readers here:
I am currently looking at deals related to online
investing tools and resources, as well as gaming and gaming services. There are
some others but these are the mega themes. I recently exited one of my companies
in the online financial space, am helping work on strategic partnerships for
another and just invested in a young integrated gaming entertainment company,
Green Screen Interactive Software. I’d be interested in what others are
seeing out there. Deal flow is very strong.
I’ve got lot of other questions rattling around that I will post soon but this is my question du jour. I’d love to know your thoughts. Thanks in advance for participating in what is hopefully a rich, interesting, interactive discussion.
