The Case for Reverting to Web Forums

The Case for Reverting to Web Forums

Byrichard

There is a case for reverting to web forums. Web forums are small communities of like minded people that form around topics, ideas, or ideals. They want to have conversations where you look at topics and sub topics, rather than following people. By having conversations on a smaller scale there is more waiting around for answers, but the connections should be more worthwhile.

Recently the ActivityPub plugin for Wordpress jumped to version 1.0.0 from version 0.0.something. In so doing I expected to find that two way conversations would be possible from wordpress to the Fediverse, and back from the Fediverse to WordPress and ClassicPRess.

That isn’t the case. Much Ado about Nothing. I really thought that the experience would have bounded to be a full-fledged solution.

Facebook and Twitter

When they were new Facebook and Twitter were great. Twitter was great because it was a community of strangers who had deep conversations online, so that when they met in person they felt like old friends. With hashtags, and the desire to have more followers people lost track of conversations, and so it became an impersonal popularity contest.

With Facebook we had a community of university friends that we got along with, in person, that reconnected with online, to share images, events and more. At the time this was great. The problem occurred when we went from conversing with friends, to playing Zynga, because after that Facebook became a place to waste time, through no fault of our own. It was designed to become a waste of time, to keep us active.

The Fediverse

For a few weeks, or even a few months I felt that the fediverse had a lot to offer. Eventually I saw that all the problems that I saw with Twitter were also present on the Fediverse. People wanted to be followed by millions, they wanted lists, and they wanted hashtags. I also felt quite a bit of aggression, trolling, and people with baggage. I deleted myself from several Fediverse instances because I didn’t feel that they were healthy places to be.

Enter phpBB.

phpBB is one of the oldest parts of the social web. phpBB boards have been around since the 90s but as we got used to Twitter, FaceBook, Myspace and other sites we forgot about the smaller, interest based communities. I don’t want to invest thousands of hours in a twitter clone. I went to become part of an online community that is small, but convivial. Setting up a web forum is easy. It’s finding a community that is challenging. That’s the challenge I face.

My Ideal

My ideal is to find an online community that is local, to chat with online, before meeting in person on a regular basis. I should be able to find that through a sporty community, like I had for years, before the current doldrums.

And Finally

One of the weaknesses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other online communities is that we follow people, rather than topcics and ideas. Of course we can follow “hasthags” but for me this is awful because it helps people spam, and distracts people from having conversations around ideas. By following people, rather than threads of conversation we’re on an open web of noise. With web forums we revert to a quieter social network where we wait for answers. in theory we can ask for notifications, rather than waiting.

I think that reverting to web forums is a good idea, because it allows us to re-build communities on a personal scale.

For now I am trying My Friends Misfits

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Social Media and The Human Return on Investment

Byrichard

Social Media and the Human Return on Investment, because contrary to popular belief we use social networks to socialise, not to shop.

As we grow older and more mature our close network of friends changes and evolves. We go from school friends to university friends and then to professional friends. In the process we move from a village to another village, from a town to another town and eventually from one city to another. In the process the links we have with some friends strengthen and others degrade over time. This is modern life.

I find it hard to discern whether the return on time invested on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and others is decreasing because people’s understanding of these social networks is shifting or whether it is related to growing up. As the people I know get married and have children their priorities change and privacy becomes more important. We have to keep the children safe.

Facebook, as a social network is less engaging than it used to be. The people I have as friends post less frequently, the events we can participate in together is shifting and the content shown in timelines is evolving. To compensate for the decline in friends engaging in social networks like twitter and Facebook people are following publications, brands and news sources. This flow of information is tailored to the lowest common denominator. The sensationalist writing style discourages me from following these sources of information.

I have a concern that what were social networks until two or three years ago have become advertising networks on which people occasionally socialise and interact with other individuals. I feel that a bigger and bigger portion of the time that people spend on advertising networks is looking at mainstream content and comments. On Facebook as I scroll down the timeline I notice an increasing number of adverts. Personal posts are less and less frequent. Has the community left this “social” network?

I have spent years thinking about online communities and how they interact. During this time I have seen the ebb and flow from one type of community to another across multiple platforms and applications. Within the next two to five years social networks will be virtual reality environments such as we saw with World of Warcraft, Everquest and Second Life. The question is whether people will want to socialise in virtual reality or whether it will be populated by gamers.

Every online social network is stigmatised. This stigmatisation prevents people from fully exploiting the potential of social networks. We see this stigma through the use of dating apps rather than Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks. Dating apps are stigmatised but at least you swipe left or right and you’re done. ;-). You’re only “active” for a few seconds at a time. On Facebook and twitter you need to be active for hours, days, weeks or even months… You have to be careful. You may be stigmatised. 😉

Now that most people see social networks as a waste of time it gives us more time to do other things. It gives us time to read, to do research, to watch television and even to go two or three hours without looking at a mobile or computer screen. Imagine that. 😉

I believe that on the one hand the stigmatisation of Social networks as a waste of time has discouraged people from using them to their full potential. As a result of this people feel comfortable spending ten to fifteen minutes a day on these networks. On the other hand I see marketers, public relations specialists and advertisers push for their campaign to be seen. As peer to peer communication goes down and human return on investment (ROI) decreases, and as marketing campaigns take over the timelines they are effectively closing the door on people’s motivation to spend time reading through their timeline.

 

Has Social Media made us less sociable?

Byrichard

Introverts who are not going to compete with extroverts, through social media, have an opportunity to have friendships and interactions that would otherwise not occur. To say that Social media makes is unsociable is a fallacy.

When I was a uni student the second time around I was socialising with fellow students all throughout the day and I was also active in social media. In 2007-2009 facebook was my university friend network. Twitter was strangers. Facebook was an extension of my physical social life.

Twitter was an opportunity to meet new people. It helped me meet people from tuttle. It introduced me to Seesmic when it was in Alpha. I conversed with some of the big names of the time and went to podcamps. I was invited to Leweb in Paris in 2009 and we met had seesmic meetups a number of times

More recently playing Ingress by Niantic Labs has helped me meet people in Paris, lausanne, Fribourg, Geneva, Nyon and other places. To say that social media makes people less social is to ignore that people use social media for conversations, not for brands.

The fallacy of most “social media professionals”, “Social media experts” and other “social media” snake oil practitioners is that they go home to a spouse or better half. They have no need to create a relationship with the people they are interacting with. As they do not create relationships with those who use social media they are kicking dust in the Atacama desert in the hope to raise enough dust to create a nucleus to which water will collect and fall as rain water.

There is a shift in social media today. It is a shift away from conversations especially on websites such as twitter and facebook towards brand brainwashing. As a result of this facebook and twitter have lost engagement.

That is not to say that other niche social networks are not benefiting from the ground broken by Facebook and twitter. In particular I am thinking of websites for slow ups and other group activities. I’m thinking of OVS (on vas sortir), Glocals (Geneva Locals) and many other social networks. I notice that the expatriated and international community benefit strongly from websites that encourage groups of people to do communal activities. Thanks to Glocals I scuba dived every single weekend for more than a year, I learned about Via Ferrata and loved the sport, I finally got to rock climb, I enjoyed canyoning and more. The idea that luddites can constantly bash social interactions via computers and electronic devices fatigues me.

You know what the most amusing thing is about the people who say that social media reduces conversations is? Their one word answer. :-D. Don’t you just love the irony?

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Threaded conversations and community

Byrichard

From the 1970s to 2007 we had threaded conversations through bulletin boards, forums, groups and other centralising discussion points. For a brief window of about two years conversations became so captivating that people wanted to meet in person as strong friendships were established. By 2009-2010 the threaded and personal conversations between web users was hijacked by “social media” marketers and so the speed of conversation and quality of interactions collapsed. In it’s place hashtags would replace user engagement with quick metrics.

The golden age of conversation has been replaced by the dark ages of indifference. Every day that we spend online we see how disengaged people have become. Look at twitter. Do you still see user to user conversations. Look at Facebook. Do you still see engaging content and passionate conversations? I see a waste of time. The conversations which were taking place have been replaced by dumbed down headlines and sensationalist content.

For several years we have heard about how corporations should not have access to our data because of what they will do with it. From where I am surfing the web and interacting with the online community I see a more serious problem. I see that as the chance of individual to individual conversations has decreased so the quality of shared articles, videos and other content has been dumbed down. This is evident on Facebook and Twitter. These networks are becoming ghost towns. They have millions of user profiles that are slowly going dormant.

That social media networks are going dormant is excellent. Instead of wasting time with Ello, Diaspora and other solutions I believe that going back to the blogging habit will benefit everyone. It is decentralised, it is interest based and it is long form. Through Worpdress.org tools, through Disqus and other solutions so our ability to connect and communicate is improved. It forces us to be positive and to be accountable. Everything that you share can contribute to your reputation and help share your passions. We should not be hidden behind silos and we should not be anonymous. We need to break the twitter and Facebook duopoly.