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Crispin informed me this morning he has created a Facebook page for Bang the Table, something we have been meaning to do for a while though without necessarily having a clear purpose (other than that we perhaps ought to have one for the convenience of people who are on Facebook). People can go there and become a ‘fan’ of Bang the Table which I find slightly embarrassing but there you go, less gushy phrases like ‘associate’ don’t seem to be available.
These lucky people will then have blog posts and other news from us as well as comments from our ‘fans’ streamed to their own pages. If you want to visit the Bang the Table Facebook page click here. I guess if you are a regular Facebook user this could be a valuable service and fits into a growing trend on the web of keeping up to date with lots of sites (or in this case people and organisations) from a single spot. There is probably a fancy word for it – perhaps someone will reply to this post with what it is but for the purposes of this post I will call it aggregating.
I use a number of these aggregating sites as time savers. One I started using for blogs recently is the excellent Regator which feeds posts from your favourite blogs and I get my news on the issues I want to follow closely from Wotnews. I also use Individurls which will take feeds from any site of your choosing and of course Digg and the fantastic local version Kwoff which are great for getting straight to the most popular things online at any moment in time.
I’ve used Facebook for some time as a way of sharing photos and one liners with friends and family back in the UK and scattered around the world but have always been a little unsure about it as a business tool and have always seen it as an enjoyable time waster rather than a time saver. One of those things you do when you should be working. I’m yet to change my view but my mind is open on the subject.
We have seen a number of our clients use Facebook to augment their online engagement, most notably Wellington City Council in New Zealand (I’d link to the page but I think it must have been taken down) and certainly if people are already using Facebook this can be a valuable way of getting them involved. The problem has always been getting meaningful and useful data about the engagement from the platform.
There is also a tendency for Facebook groups to be used as petitions not as places to discuss and shape policy. My favourite petition style page (also from Wellington) is the Save Manners Mall Facebook Group which has 2768 members. I like this one because it is an expression of local activism but in common with most of these pages the discussion seems to be limited indicating that signing up to the petition is the primary purpose. On a more global scale there is also the charmingly named F**k off Japan ….leave the whales alone page with over 330,000 members – I’m not expecting Bang the Table to reach that sort of membership for a few weeks but we have five already so who knows…
I can find no evidence of whether, having joined a group, many people ever revisit it or whether joining as an expression of support of the cause is the entire and sole point of the exercise. If this is the case then the use of a Facebook group as a medium for engagement will be limited in its value.
Rather than describe more of the potential shortcomings of these groups I will leave it to the incredibly eloquent Adrian the founder of the Facebook Group: Official Facebook petition to end “Official Facebook Petition” groups who introduces his group with the following diatribe:
Your Facebook group is not a frackin’ “official petition” to Facebook
There are lots of official, semi-official and unofficial-through-official-channels ways to do things, especially petitions.
However, in this (let’s pretend it’s a) pyramid, your Facebook group petitioning Facebook – or the U.N., or NATO, or Israel, or Google, or Microsoft, or the U.S., or whothefrackever – to do [x] because [y] of your bestest buddies are pissed enough to click “join” – is neither official nor a real petition.
It’s not written. It will never be “submitted to” the putatively receiving body except in the most general sense. The names aren’t verified. And other than as a vague “click” on the Internet Outrage counter, nobody is reading your comments except fellow irrationally outraged people, who hardly need more convincing.
You have a vague, partially-formed opinion about something. You’d *like* to do something, but can’t be bothered to do more than click – so why not do the next-best thing and be *seen* pretending to do something about it? Congratulations, you just joined a Facebook petition group.
Come back when you’ve joined the Peace Corps or taken a bullet for your Kwik-E-Mart.
This concludes my formation of a Facebook group to advocate my beliefs. Oh, the irony.
Amen. I’m off for a game of Facebook Scrabble now.
This work by Bang the Table Pty Ltd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.
