O'Reilly Media group on Facebook
Catching up on unread mail, I found this message from O'Reilly user group maven Marsee Henon:
Mary Rotman and I have started an O'Reilly Media Facebook group and wanted to let you know. We're also looking for more content to add such as photos, videos, or other things you'd like to share with our fans.If you have a facebook account, the link above should take you straight there. If you don't, now's a great time to join.
Now, we sell a couple of million books a year, and have millions of unique visitors to our online sites, yet in the nearly a month and a half since Marsee and Mary started the Facebook group, I see only 229 members, including me. (I just joined.) You'd think that with all our millions of customers, more than 229 would have discovered and joined this group. Even leaving all our anonymous readers out of it, Marsee has a database of more than 2500 user groups who interact with O'Reilly, with collective membership of perhaps 250,000, assuming an average user group membership of 100. (The largest user group in our file, the Brasilia Java Users Group, has 20,972 members, so this number may be low.)
As Dave McClure keeps telling us, Facebook virality doesn't happen naturally. You have to work at it, particularly through News Feed Optimization. But I'm mindful of the fact, noted in our report on the Facebook Application Platform, that there doesn't appear to be much of a long-tail of Facebook applications. There's a very short head. Contrast this with the web, where there is a huge amount of activity out in the tail.
What are your thoughts? How many of you (Radar readers) are on Facebook? How many of you join groups? How useful are those groups to you?
tags: facebook, oreilly, usergroups
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[12.04.07 06:16 AM]
Honestly, Tim, I'm not at all surprised. I haven't tried creating a Facebook group for TidBITS or for Take Control because I can't see any reason why it would succeed. I have made several groups for my local running clubs (the Finger Lakes Runners Club and the High Noon Athletic Club) because both want to attract students from Cornell University, so it makes sense to have a presence on Facebook. But neither are wildly successful there either, and with no apparent benefit, I lost interest in spending the time to keep posting events for upcoming races and pictures from previous ones. More generally, I think there are a few reasons the O'Reilly group is small and will likely stay that way:
* Your audience, by virtue of reading books, isn't the Facebook generation, by definition. Whether or not Facebook is open to all, the fact is that the majority of the users are young people who got on in college. When I've invited older people in my running clubs, they either join and never come back, or announce that they don't do Facebook - meaning that they have no interest in even learning what it's about to see if it would interest them.
* Facebook encourages people to accept as friends only people who really are friends (as opposed to LinkedIn, where I'm more likely to link with someone who might be a useful business contact, even if I barely know them). As a result, my belief is that Facebook will stay focused mostly on personal relationships, not relationships with companies. There's no virality in 95% of my friends seeing that I joined the O'Reilly group and am in the Peachpit group - my friends largely don't do publishing.
* It's not entirely clear to me how a company like O'Reilly could act on Facebook to generate the everyday events that Facebook reports and that Facebook users find interesting. Most people won't be interested in most book releases or most user group events or anything else. Facebook is about the minutiae of relationships between people, and B2C relationships (haven't used that acronym in some years) are, frankly, quite boring.
cheers... -Adam
[12.04.07 06:40 AM]
On Facebook, fairly active there, but agree that the groups are not implemented in a way to make them more effective. There is no way of reporting group activity, so from a user perspective, it's always a push not a pull. Since you end up joining many groups, you don't end up doing much with them.
Currently the only real use of a group is notices and related content (links, etc). The wall is not the best group discussion forum since it isn't threaded.
[12.04.07 06:45 AM]
Being both a regular user of facebook and a big fan of O'Reilly Media, I think the O'Reilly facebook group is great! I was invited to the group as I've written articles for O'Reilly in the past.
Personally, I find facebook groups most useful in staying "in the know" about events that I'd be interested in. Likewise, facebook groups seem to be a great way to reach an audience when you're trying to organize an event (as I've seen my friends do).
Let's hope the O'Reilly group keeps growing!
Paul.
[12.04.07 07:03 AM]
I have a Facebook account, but I do not live in it. It is mostly there to keep in touch with people that are not on other systems I also have accounts (e.g. LinkedIn).
Facebook is not integrating with my (mostly RSS) information flow, so I do not see advantages of joining 'newsy' groups. I would much prefer it to be in a blog with one-decision per-view required for each interesting item rather than stuck in my Facebook feed/view.
[12.04.07 07:25 AM]
I'm a college professor. With a .edu address, I could have joined facebook back in the day but felt it was infringing too much on the "student domain". From my observation, a lot of it was about social/crush/romantic goings on. Not a place I need to be.
Now, professional, non-academic colleagues tell me that it is a great networking tool. However, reading Dave McClure's post about the Stanford/Facebook project, it looks like the popular apps have provocative names dealing with hotness and kissing.
I don't have anything against that. It's just not where I want to spend my professional time.
[12.04.07 08:28 AM]
I think Bud has it right. I joined Facebook earlier this year, largely to catch up with some friends I'd lost track of since college. After catching a few people, that was it. What more, exactly, does Facebook have to offer me? Now, if it were to integrate with my contacts, that might be interesting. But from a professional perspective, it's got nothing for me right now.
[12.04.07 09:26 AM]
I believe the "short head" effect you describe is a result of the way Facebook's searching/directories work (or don't).
We've been helping clients to build and promote apps on Facebook, and as one colleague put it: "It's hard to find anything on FB unless somebody else shows it to you".
As experiment, try searching for "Starbucks" in FB. it yields:
121 people
6 pages
500+ groups
500+ events
5 applications
1 network
...with no good way to further sort/filter your results (the 'More Filters' is fairly anemic, and the "Advanced Search" only works within your personal network"). Even a 'sort by # of members' would help.
Long story short: The long tail is hard to find on FB.
[12.04.07 10:24 AM]
Thanks for this Facebook group. This is the first group I have joined on Facebook and one of the few Facebook groups that I find useful.
[12.04.07 10:25 AM]
Just thought I'd mention that a lot of Facebook users consider the groups little more than a way to put clever comments on their page via the name. As in joining the group "I Will Go Slightly Out Of My Way To Step On That Crunchy Leaf" or "Windows Vista Sucks."
[12.04.07 11:03 AM]
Tim,
For professional activities, I rely on LinkedIn. Facebook is a pure extracurricular, social toy for me. And, given the strength and professional nature of my LinkedIn profile, I wouldn't be suprised if that was true for may others.
Is there something O'Reilly can do on LinkedIn?
[12.04.07 12:02 PM]
hey tim -
(fyi, i just joined the group ;)
i think the issue you're highlighting here is that there is still a disconnect on facebook between apps (which can have terrific viral distribution under the right conditions) and groups / FB pages, which aren't inherently viral per se (altho a few groups with broader visibility like 1M Strong for Stephen Colbert can also pickup lots of a ton of users quickly).
imho, this is not so much problem as opportunity -- there's potential for combining the viral distribution power of a Facebook app with a group or page to introduce the same vibrant long tail scenario on FB as on the web overall. however, not sure this has really been figured out just yet. just last month with the launch of Facebook Pages, there's now a way to embed apps on non-individual pages, which might be the first step in this direction.
but as you say, viral doesn't happen for free. either the group has to be promoted by individuals, or the actions of the group need to be "newsfeedworthy" enough to drive adoption... or else you really need an app with specifically designed viral features to create visibility.
anyway, the net-net is that Facebook & FB apps are a pretty interesting distribution environment, but only under certain conditions. figuring out & designing those conditions and/or apps is where the secret sauce lies...
- dave mcclure
http://500hats.typepad.com
[12.04.07 12:32 PM]
As many of the commenters said, facebooks groups are not ego-centric and don't provide any value. Let's say i joined O'Reilly Media Group. Then what? What value will it provide me? Will i get news ahead of the time ? Will i get book recommendations? No, nothing except useless wall posts, links i can find anywhere else, etc.
[12.04.07 02:27 PM]
I don't see anything interesting happening in most Facebook groups. They're mostly impulse joins, "yeah I like that cause!," "yeah I think that's cool!" The discussions never take off and the wall posts rarely top half a dozen. It seems that once people join they rarely come back.
In my circles, there's a new FB group for the same general topic every two months or so. The same batch of people join and make jokey wall posts about whatever group picture was chosen this time. But nothing ever happens on the Group. It's a quick jolt of identity but not a good organizing tool.
I recently started a Facebook "Page" for an aggregator project of mine. I have a defined team who works with me and I wanted a place to actually plot out future features and get feedback. It's a very open project and I didn't mind if involved users listened in and gave comments. But it's fizzled. I posted a query to the Discussion Board but no one's answered. I moved the Board up higher in the page. I posted on the Wall that there was a discussion I wanted. Still nothing. I'm probably going to chalk this up as a failed communication experiment and just close the Page in the near future.
I'd love to see a usability expert try to figure out why activity in the majority of Facebook Groups is so short-lived. The question then: is this intentional? Does Facebook not want it to become Yahoo Groups? Is there a strategic advantage to keep people interacting primarily on a one-to-one basis?
[12.04.07 02:46 PM]
I'm a part of Make: on Facebook, but PT and the crew don't really add much to it that doesn't exist already on makezine.com. I'll check out O'Reilly Media, but what would being on Facebook allow you to do that you already don't do on any other oreilly.com site? Will there be a Radar, Safari, and other subparts having their own Facebook?
[12.04.07 05:36 PM]
That I read this blog means I don't have much use for a facebook source of OReilly news.
I use facebook, read this blog, buy OReilly books, but wouldn't bother with any facebook groups. Perhaps that would change, but I don't see the format as superior to blogs/RSS and dedicated sites.
[12.04.07 06:46 PM]
I've skipped joining Facebook this time around. (Been friendstered done Orkut. Etc.) I have looked around at it, but as mentioned above, it has three problems:
1. It doesn't use my search engine, so I have a hard time finding things.
2. No compatible RSS feeds.
3. Nobody reads/responds to wall comments in groups/on pages.
If I want information from O'Reilly, I'd rather get it here.
Bigger picture: Notice I said "my search engine". That's "mine" as in my pen, my moleskine, my DVD player. Google, in other words, the tool I use all the time. Facebook isn't strong enough to break my toolset. Neither can I figure out how to get RSS feeds out of Facebook via Google Reader. That's one of my other primary tools, btw. It is good for socializing - because I already know the scope of my social world, I can manually search that.
The fourth problem, of course:
4. Beacon
[12.05.07 10:44 AM]
I attended OSCON and Web 2.0 Summit this year and was enthused to join the facebook groups for both events. I thought it would be a cool way to interact and make connections with the other participants. But the groups turned out to be mostly empty echo chambers. Even at Web 2.0 where Mark Z spoke there was virtually no activity in the group; and I was surprised to see that Mark didn't bother joining it.
I think the interaction model simply paled in comparison to the real world shoulder rubbing on all around. The other issue with facebook groups in general is that they don't seem to generate much or any activity in the news feed; you have to think to go there as nothing reaches out to pull you in.
[01.01.08 06:45 PM]
The biggest issue I have with Facebook and MySpace is that the business location I spend a lot of time at blocks Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and a number of other "no-business" sites.
I am glad I have an iPhone in order to be able to get around these restrictions! This situation is not uncommon and points to social networks needing to build strong mobile platforms.
[01.01.08 06:48 PM]
The biggest issue I have with Facebook and MySpace is that the business location I spend a lot of time at blocks Facebook, Myspace, YouTube and a number of other "no-business" sites.
I am glad I have an iPhone in order to be able to get around these restrictions! This situation is not uncommon and points to social networks needing to build strong mobile platforms.
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Eric Meyer [12.04.07 06:16 AM]
I joined Facebook recently specifically to join the group for An Event Apart. Thus far not much has happened with it, but the group was established between conference seasons (we take a hiatus between October and April) so things may change come the spring.
Other than that, I don't join groups or really do much on Facebook. (And I wouldn't even have joined if not for the AEA group.) Now I have to decide if it's worth wandering over to Facebook to join the ORA group. Curses!