Facebook vs Forum

[Andrew]

Some consider Facebook (and other social media) to be a "better" medium for discussion that a forum (such as this one). The aim of this thread is to try and understand the differences, similarities, relative advantages and disadvantages of the these media.

Please help by sharing your own thoughts / ideas about this. For example, what are the relative advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses of these two types of group exchange?

[drunken boxer]

My observation, as a occasional and unenthusiastic facebook user, is that some students regularly post comments and links about kungfu on facebook, but they don't post as often on the forum.

I don't know if this is because they find facebook nicer and easier to use than a standard forum, or simply because facebook has permeated our lives so much that it is just a question of familiarity. In the same way that you might know two pubs, and each one is as good as each other, but if one of them is closer to you, and more of your friends go there, and you get used to it, you might use it more than the other pub even though the other pub is just as good in terms of facilities. But I will guess people consider better or easier usability to be a feature of facebook over the forum. Just guessing because I am more comfortable with the usability of the forum.

An advantage of the forum, in my eyes, is anonymity, because I have always been involved with other kungfu schools and so forth, I talk about these experiences on the forum freely because I can be anonymous and keep them anonymous, whereas on facebook I would be much more guarded, and probably wouldn't discuss it at all.

Also personally I like some separation between work, friends, family and training. I would prefer to discuss work things, or talk with work colleagues, at work rather than on facebook, and the same with kungfu and training. Then again I don't like using facebook for friends or family discussions either, so I guess I just don't like facebook - but I know that is evidently a minority viewpoint!

[Alex McLeod]

Personally, I dislike Facebook, but everyone uses it. If you want people to see something, it needs to show up on their feed. However, it is not conducive at all to a proper discussion. It could be weeks or months between posting something and people seeing it. A dedicated discussion forum is a far superior vehicle for discussions. Facebook is a far superior vehicle for advertising and marketing efforts, with the caveat that it will NEVER be under your control. You can only react to their decisions, never able to respond. My opinion is that if you have a Facebook following, you need to convince them to join you at a website you control.

[Andrew]

Good inputs. Some of the things I dislike about Facebook vs. Forum:
- I cannot decide what I get to read / see
- If I am not "constantly" online, I will likely miss many things
- There is no easy way to see the past / search for specific content
- Marketing is good of Facebook, but I don't really want to see it most of the time

There is more, but these points are more than enough for me to want to use the forum more than Facebook.

Where Facebook & co. excel is in chatting i.e. short-burst exchanges. However, with little to no moderation or control, these can easily go off-topic.

[sancrica]

Dear Shaolin Wahnam Family,

I want to thank Andrew Siheng for creating this interesting thread and I want to also thank the participants of it.

I have been an avid user of Facebook for a long time but I admit that in the last year I am using it very little.

Facebook has evolved over the years quite significantly and so the advertising and sharing features in it.

I remember in the old days that Facebook was about sharing personal things rather than news, videos or any other media content around Internet.

The sharing feature is now so well integrated in almost every website that sharing content is just one click away. I have noticed that this has had a tremendous impact on the way timeline displays its content. More than 90% of what I see now on my timeline are things that aren't even related to my friends on Facebook.

When Facebook bought Whatsapp for 19 billion I thought they were crazy. But over the years I have seen that discussions are happening more and more on Whatsapp groups. What is your thought on this? Does this happen to you too?

I personally love the Forum because there is no advertising, there are moderators and people speak about things I like.

I can also easily access to old threads and read them again seeking for some inspiration. For example once every now and then I read the beautiful testimony of Drew Sidai. This Forum is like the Library of Alexandria. There is an immense knowledge in it that has been collected over around 20 years (or maybe more?).

With Love, Care and Shaolin Salute,

Santi

[drunken boxer]

GoodSome of the things I dislike about Facebook vs. Forum:
- I cannot decide what I get to read / see
- If I am not "constantly" online, I will likely miss many things
- There is no easy way to see the past / search for specific content

Definitely, I strongly agree with these points Siheng.

- Marketing is good of Facebook, but I don't really want to see it most of the time

Even on this one, I find facebook intensely suboptimal! All too often there is a page linked to a business, which doesn't even have that business's web address on display. Either I am using facebook wrongly, or facebook are incompetent, or most likely this is deliberate because facebook are trying to drive businesses to use facebook rather than drive the traffic to the actual business websites.

And if the latter is the case, then I still think they do a bad job, because just as a simple example, there are times when I hear of a new restaurant, I look up that restaurant on google, and being a new restaurant they may only have a facebook page, having decided against investing in their own website at this early stage. So I click on the facebook link and often I find it very difficult to find their menu information, even though I know it is buried somewhere on that page.

[Andrew]

The sharing feature is now so well integrated in almost every website that sharing content is just one click away.

Interestingly, I activated this feature in the forum (top of every thread) some years ago and it is hardly used. I wonder why this is?

Any thoughts?

[sancrica]

Dear Shaolin Wahnam Family,

Interestingly, I activated this feature in the forum (top of every thread) some years ago and it is hardly used. I wonder why this is?

Any thoughts?

That is an interesting question Siheng. To be honest I have never used this feature in the forum though I think that it is a wonderful and easy way to share content from the forum.

In my many years using Facebook, I have hardly seen people sharing content from Forums. I would not know the reason for that. Maybe anyone here knows the answer? Why people might not be inclined to share content from forums?

With Love, Care and Shaolin Salute,

Santi

[Alex McLeod]

Who would you be sharing it with other than the people who already browse the forum? That's certainly why I don't use the function.

[Andrew]

Who would you be sharing it with other than the people who already browse the forum?

Anyone else who follows you on Facebook. I would estimate that most people have more than 50% of their Facebook friends outside of Shaolin Wahnam?

[Mark CH]

Personally I don't really go on forums much, it is easier to check things on social media like Facebook and Instagram.

I think the forum here is great for information, for people to chat and ask questions.

Facebook could be used to reach a greater audience and get the Shaolin Wahnam name out there more. It can also be a great way to promote Sifu's courses. The great the number of followers you have on Facebook then the better the chance that they will arrive on this forum too. Using both efficiently is a win win situation.

Best wishes
Mark

[Andrea]

I use Facebook, as well as other social media platforms daily for work and privately.
In my opinion and for my usage the advantages/disadvantages are as follows:

Forum
+ threads structure makes it easy to follow the most recent discussions
+ messages are longer and mostly well written, allowing for a more in-depth discussion
+ offers a good search function
- requires that I specially log into the forum
- needs a desktop access as the mobile version doesn't work too well/has no dedicated app
- takes time to post messages, as they are longer and more throughout than on social media platforms.
- is not used by many people today

Facebook and other social media platforms
+ I am always logged in via mobile/tablet, thus it is easy to quickly check what's going on
+ works well on mobile devices, does not require me to start the desktop pc
+ allows me to stay in touch with friends, colleagues and customers at the same time
+ offers different channels such as groups, fan pages, personal profiles, messenger to communicate and stay in touch
+ has good professional groups with discussions and knowledge sharing for advanced topics (even though it is not always easy to find them)
+ allows me to connect longterm to people who share interesting content/good advice etc.
+ gives me the opportunity to promote my own offer at the same time
+ allows for quick posts/discussions and does not require a lengthy text
+ offers filtering functions (lists/priority for newsfeed) either directly or with 3th party tools
- can be overwhelming as the discussions, posts etc are not well structured (most recent simply shows first)
- the platforms automatically filter posts based on what they think I will want to see, thus I might miss posts

As I do use Facebook and other social media platforms for a number of different tasks daily, I prefer them. But I also see the advantages of a dedicated forum.
With regards to students and those interested in our arts, I see that 75% are on Facebook and many of them like or share posts related to our arts. Yet despite encouraging them often they haven't really found their way to the forum.

[Mark CH]

With regards to students and those interested in our arts, I see that 75% are on Facebook and many of them like or share posts related to our arts. Yet despite encouraging them often they haven't really found their way to the forum.

A very good point here and maybe also worth pointing out is with such a large school we only have 650 followers on Facebook. It would be good to incresase the likes

[sancrica]

Dear Shaolin Wahnam Family,

A very good point here and maybe also worth pointing out is with such a large school we only have 650 followers on Facebook. It would be good to increase the likes

Thanks for pointing this out dear Sidai. We could use this as an opportunity to do some brain storming and suggest the best possible strategies that can help to achieve this goal.

Some strategies that I suggest would be:

- To increase the frequency of posts. We have a lot of content that we can actually share from Sifu's website. We can aim to have 1 post per day or 1 post every 2 days, for example.

- It would be a good strategy to use https://shaolin.org/ website address instead of www.wahnam.com. Maybe this has been an strategic decision and there is a reason behind it. Usually, redirections are not good in marketing and wahnam.com in the end redirects to shaolin.org:

Facebook.jpg

What strategies would you use in order to increase the likes on Shaolin Wahanm Institute Fan Page on Facebook?

With Love, Care and Shaolin Salute,

Santi

[Grimlock]

I also much prefer the forum to facebook.

Facebook may be where many people generally spend their time, making it convenient to then also discuss the Shaolin Arts, but I like the forum as a destination. I guess this was more important several years ago when it was more expensive/difficult to stay in touch with family members around the world by other means, but it was huge for me when I was training on my own and didn't have anyone locally to talk to about the Shaolin Arts. Many of the uninitiated find our philosophy foreign, even many other internal arts practitioners.

For some perspective, within the last year, I had a group of coworkers wondering if acupuncture really works or if it's pseudo-science/quackery. Yes, those can be opportunities to inform, but I'm long past wanting to spend my time trying to "convince" others of such things, especially when those conversations are framed in such a way. Sometimes you just need to be able to talk to other people who already "get it" the same way you do, which can make for deeper, more interesting discussions. Breadth is great, but depth is great, too!

Simply put, I don't trust facebook, and I would rather us be in control of the wonderful information we amass about the Shaolin Arts. I agree that facebook would be better suited for having groups and pages that point out interesting forum threads for people to check out. There are especially some real gems from the past.

The one thing I miss in the forum is the ability to have discussions that should maybe not be totally public. For instance, I would love to be able to easily discuss aspects of the Essence of Shaolin course and insights gained from continued training of the material with others who took the course. That would be difficult to do in the forum without potentially giving away secrets that are not meant for the public. But I also don't want to put that kind of information anywhere on facebook, and would prefer to keep such information as part of our Library of Alexandria, as Santi said.