A call for GRM'ers to join Facebook, if only for the car stuffs!

Damn.... Called out!

For some reason, I find following twitter feeds to be fairly useful, but I just can't get excited about the faceyspace. I do visit the Facebook pages for events and companies, though, so as long as those pages are public, I can consume that information without having to jump in to the pool as it were.

As it turns out, my regularly scheduled co-driver and I are going to be getting fondled by blueshirts during the drivers' meeting and will be strapped into an aluminum tube for most of the rest of this weekend's event regardless of being connected to Facebook. Even with something like that, though, I would have probably not seen the notification for OVR's last rallyx that it was going to be starting early due to the impending rain if that notification had been made through twitter or Facebook - for me, email is the best way to receive any kind of push notification.

In reply to alfadriver:

No, not really. Nobody accused you of being paranoid, either, that was a general comment about the Big Brother raving on the first page. It's also very clear that nobody will ever convince you to use Facebook under any circumstance, which is fine. So why be so aggressively pursuant of a way to delegitimize it?

alfadriver wrote: In reply to SlickDizzy, Tom_Spanger: So then for this to be an effective tool to mass message, the person you are sending it to probably will have to go to their FB site, yes?

For email to be an effective tool to mass message, the person you are sending it to probably will have to check their email, yes? So... what's the difference? They'd have to answer the phone, too, or at least check their voicemail. If you went to their house they'd have to come to the door.

You have your own reasons for not using Facebook; that's fine, I don't care what they are, no one is forcing you to. But don't expect the majority to make a lot of extra effort accommodating your minority choice when there is an easier and more effective method (such as FB currently is) available.

SlickDizzy wrote: In reply to alfadriver: No, not really. Nobody accused you of being paranoid, either, that was a general comment about the Big Brother raving on the first page. It's also very clear that nobody will ever convince you to use Facebook under any circumstance, which is fine. So why be so aggressively pursuant of a way to delegitimize it?

Well, this whole thread started asking people to joing FB so that their club can communicate with them, as if there is no other way to communicate.

I just asked to find a good alternative to FB for the people who don't want to.

And in spite of the popularity FB, the original request would not be there if it's the end all, be all, thing that everyone says that is- otherwise, more than eough people would be part of it.

So I'm trying to point out that there ARE logical alternatives that are not FB, and require the person you are tyring to reach pretty much the same effort at the time of the message without the requirement to join.

Like a blog. Which can be subscribed to, and send notices, or just go to the site as you would a FB page.

I'm trying to fix the problem that was originally posted. Without forcing people to join FB that may not want to.

Some of you seem really brainwashed that FB is the only solution.

BTW, being labled a "tinfoil hat" crowd IS being accused of being paranoid. Not sure how it's not.

Duke wrote: But don't expect the majority to make a lot of extra effort accommodating your minority choice when there is an easier and more effective method (such as FB currently is) available.

Am I the only one who sees that this statement is totally not what the orignal post reflects? Really- if you need to ask people to join, then not enough people are using it to work. Seems pretty obvious to me.

Aside from the obvious privacy issues that can be worked around by blatently violating the FB terms/conditions with a fake name ...

I don't belong to the local shooting club because they insisted I join the NRA to be a member and I have no desire to be associated with that organization.

Insisting I join FB to join a club is asking me to help promote a company that I don't want to be associated with because they have and still do employ shady business practices that I find appalling.

So, if it involves facebook, even a public page... no dice. berkeley them right in their Zuckerburg shiny happy people.

What annoys me about facebook is the people constantly asking me to join facebook....lol.

In reply to alfadriver:

Jerry wrote: I've noticed our rallycross and autocross Facebook pages have been super busy keeping people updated with news about events and sites. Delays, cancels, etc. It occurred to me that there are at least a handful of us that might be "too cool" for Facebook. But god damn you can't beat the convenience of keeping everyone notified of important stuff...

See added emphasis. He's asking a small handful of holdouts to join the larger group so that it is a more efficient and effective method of making sure everyone is informed. He could ask everybody else to stop using FB and go back to whatever they had before, but why would he? That would be ineffective at best, probably counterproductive, and potentially disastrous.

I understand some people don't like FB. I don't see the evil but I use it somewhat wisely. Others think cars are evil, but I try to use them wisely too. Does that mean I have to ride a bike because there is a small but fanatic bicyclist lobby in my town who hate cars?

You're ignoring the fact that the number of pro-FB members lost by going to a different communication platform would likely far outweigh the gain of a few FB haters who might be reached.

Yes, there are alternatives... my mountain bike team uses Yahoo Groups for info and discussions. There are a few ways to retrieve info from it: like forum (log on and view posts), as a digest (bulk emails of posts sent throughout the day), or as individual emails. Since we use the group mainly for communication, I have it set up to send each post as an email. Other groups where I don't want or need that level of connectivity I have posts sent in digest form. A few others I care less about I log on to view.

We also have a FB page, but it's mainly used to post pictures and promote the team or events we're attending (a few of our sponsors require a FB presence as part of our sponsorship agreement). There is also a website blog, but as previously mentioned, posting on FB is a lot easier and reaches more people with less effort on their part - a post on our FB page automatically shows up in their Newsfeed (if they want it to) vs. having to go to our website to see blog updates. We tend to use the blog more as an event archive.

We went through this same thing with Asphault Adventures. Maintain a website, FB page, and online forum. 90% of the traffic was on the FB page. I made sure official news hit all the sites but when teams planned group "side trips" during an event and people not on FB missed out they felt butthurt. Nothing I can do about it.

With the old BABE rally there were a lot of holdouts just on having smart phones. Scoring a challenge manually at the end of the day took up 3-4 hours of the organizers' time in the evening. AA only uses smartphones for challenge scoring. If you are a holdout, come along, have fun but if you want to compete get a team mate with a smart phone.

We have reached a point where it is just too time consuming (and therefore expensive) to pander to a small few who choose not to keep up with the technology. It is a shame and I hate for people to be left out but when the manpower involved costs more than the profit generated from the minority then it is no longer viable to cater to that group.

And yes you can lock down a FB account to keep your information private. I can usually find more things on an individual just by googling their name than by searching them on FB.

alfadriver wrote:

rcutclif wrote: OK, while I don't really love fb, I can admit it does have value in the number of people on there. Also, we all have to remember there is no such thing as a free lunch. Fb does not charge users (yet), so of course they will be finding other ways to make money from you. As for 'tin foil hats', you are only part of this group of you do not join Facebook because they know too much about you and you find that creepy. If you just don't like fb for another reason, that might make you a grumpy old man (or woman), and is probably closely related to the GRM manual transmission gene.

I'm not paranoid, I don't see the point. Accusing me of being paranoid makes me see the point even less.

I'm not accusing you of being paranoid, I am accusing you of being Grumpy. and Old.

I am making sweeping and likely unfair and inaccurate generalizations here, but i'd like to at least be precise about it.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Insisting I join FB to join a club is asking me to help promote a company that I don't want to be associated with because they have and still do employ shady business practices that I find appalling. So, if it involves facebook, even a public page... no dice. berkeley them right in their Zuckerburg shiny happy people.

This. Thank you GPS for succinctly distilling the issue to its essence.

Duke wrote: In reply to alfadriver:

Jerry wrote: I've noticed our rallycross and autocross Facebook pages have been super busy keeping people updated with news about events and sites. Delays, cancels, etc. It occurred to me that there are at least a handful of us that might be "too cool" for Facebook. But god damn you can't beat the convenience of keeping everyone notified of important stuff...

See added emphasis. He's asking a *small handful of holdouts* to join the *larger group* so that it is a more efficient and effective method of making sure everyone is informed. He *could* ask everybody else to stop using FB and go back to whatever they had before, but why would he? That would be ineffective at best, probably counterproductive, and potentially disastrous.

Someone gets it.

Well, it's a choice you have to make.

Like JThw8 said, don't get bent out of shape when you miss something.

Toyman01 wrote: I check it twice a day and I get reminders on my phone. Easy.

So you have to get a smartphone?

rcutclif wrote: but isn't it a service to you as a consumer? I mean, I'd much rather see HF coupons for the drill press I'm looking to pick up than another offer from Comcast for the services I already buy from them. Then, Google just saved me 10 bucks on a drill press, that can be viewed as a service to me.

I have adblock. If i want to shop for something, it's when I want to buy something.

I am not a consumer and I take it as a deep insult to be called one, in a Tyler sort of way.

Knurled wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: I check it twice a day and I get reminders on my phone. Easy.

So you have to get a smartphone?

I've had one of those longer than I've been on FB. I'm not quite as Luddite as I let on at times.

Knurled wrote:

rcutclif wrote: but isn't it a service to you as a consumer? I mean, I'd much rather see HF coupons for the drill press I'm looking to pick up than another offer from Comcast for the services I already buy from them. Then, Google just saved me 10 bucks on a drill press, that can be viewed as a service to me.

I have adblock. If i want to shop for something, it's when I want to buy something. I am not a consumer and I take it as a deep insult to be called one, in a Tyler sort of way.

Excellent! That is great. I certainly hope that most people on this board do not feel like they are simply consumers. I would venture to guess that most if not all here are net producers across their life in a large way. However, I don't know if there is a single american who has never bought something. Ever. In their entire life. Or has something bought for them. There are times in your life you will be playing the role of the consumer.

Everyone hates ads on the radio too. but those ads allow me to listen to talk or music at no dollar charge. We all have the choice to listen to the radio or not, just like we do to use the internet. But radio ads have never saved me money on anything (they are not specific to me). I don't think I can say the same about internet ads.

I will say I don't know of a subscription service that you could choose to pay a monthly fee to get truly ad-free internet (analogous to satelite radio), but that might be a good idea for some.

I use Facebook for club stuff, Autocross attendance is up 25% and we had to start a Novice class due to all the newcomers.

rcutclif wrote: I will say I don't know of a subscription service that you could choose to pay a monthly fee to get truly ad-free internet (analogous to satelite radio), but that might be a good idea for some.

When I first got online, commercial content was generally banned. If you posted an advertisement to a mailing list or USENET group, you'd get flamed hard and you probably would get a lot of nastygrams sent to your domain/postmaster.

I respect that times change. That doesn't mean I have to like it

The original beef I had with FB was that it is a walled off site. You can't search from externally. I had a strong philosophical aversion to that - 'net.land is supposed to be the free trade of information, and locking information up like that is anathema.

I'm neither old nor grumpy, I just don't get it. I joined, received friend requests from people from third grade, wandered around the site and promptly deleted as much as allowed and never went back.

It is silly and a time sink IMO. I value my time; obviously since I'm posting in this thread.

Thinking your are protecting your privacy by not being on Facebook is, at best erroneous, at worst sheer stupidity.

I have friends and family across the world, nothing beats Facebook for dropping a note without worrying about cost or time differences.

I respect everyone choices, even when you insist on being wrong.

I bought my 944 Turbo for cheap, thanks to a post on FB because the owner and I were part of a local Porsche group and he was running out of time to move and needed to have the car go away, one way or another. He'd had it posted on several forums as well, but I was able to get to the front of the line because my messages went straight to his phone and I was more local than most that were looking.

I also keep abreast of the friends and family I actually care about, many of the racers and racing related things I enjoy (and Science, Sci-Fi, travel, etc.). Plus I get to annoy DSW, JG, Joe, Margie, Tim, Tom and other GRM'ers more directly, heh.

As has been said, its a communication tool. You can choose to use it in anyway you'd like. You can with some training (every tool needs some sort of training) keep it very simple and fairly secure from some of the flotsam and jetsam that is prevalent on nearly any website these days.