More about facebook

I created a group for a high school reunion, more to see what the group creation process is like for the admin than really expecting those celebrating a 40th reunion to change their behavior and switch over to Facebook. [They haven’t really been using the Yahoo! group/e-mail list established for the 35th, so why would this be different?]

Facebook is seductive that way — while there are professional groups, it’s easy to find groups that deal with the rest of your life. I’m still struggling with whether that is a good thing or not.

For instance, I’d like to make the discussion boards open to just the members of the reunion group. That way I’d be free to post things there that wouldn’t really be of interest to others who might stumble upon me in one of my other personas. Is that an “over 50” way of looking at the world? Do we compartmentalize our lives in ways that the core Facebook population does not? This might also work for other kinds of groups — e.g. AAUW branches who want to have some public face (posting on the facebook “wall”) but might also want to keep their discussion board “private” (as a member benefit, or just to change the tenor of the discussion to be a known group in the midst of the millions and millions of Facebook users).

Please holler at me if you’ve thoughts on this issue (or if, on the technical side, you know where to find “Facebook: The Missing Manual” that explains how to configure things that aren’t obvious.]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.