I am an admin on a small FB group for owners of a certain type of rare wood lathe. We moved from Yahoo when that platform got ugly to use and maintain. We now have a small and focused group without all the glitz of the larger woodworking FB groups.
It dawned on me, why don’t we do the same with this G+ group.
I don’t know what it is specifically but I enjoy working with this group more than the current Laser engraving groups on FB. I guess this group and G+ in general seems to be more Maker/engineering oriented and there is not as much “social overhead” on here. Maybe its just that those groups are so large and diverse I find myself wading through a lot of garbage to get to interesting things. Maybe its just me …
I never and still not trust FB (and all others software from FB), a no go for me. this view is shared by many other old “Maker” with a bit of knowledge background. don’t worry we will find a solution for the community.
I’m already subscribed to several FB laser/cnc groups so it wouldn’t bother me to much. You are right about FB. I like the people here since it is more technical. Wherever this group ends up, I hope it lives on with many of the same users.
@JamieR Bang on right. Some co-worker friends from Microsoft and I were considering developing an app for FB in its early days (about mid-2007). We discovered the app would have access to your list of friends (and IIRC, their friends!) and we realized this was just not something we were comfortable with and we abandoned the idea/platform. Some creepy shit, IMHO. Those early apps (Vampires/Werewolves) were little more than data harvesting s**t.
I’ve been warning friends and family about the apps for years, and of course some didn’t listen and next thing you know, I was getting spam emails using their name to make me open them. They just recently updated the security, but I still won’t install one because they can still have access to your email and list. Some of those apps used to access everything and people would still give them permissions and install knowing this fact.
@JamieR Yep. The metadata they exposed by default was insane. Like home phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses–of your friends. I think the defaults might be better now, but I haven’t looked into it. I simply do not install ANY apps on FB.
Social platform discussions always raise a spectrum of concerns.
Every platform has its security vs usability trade-offs. More usability usually exposes more security issues, especially when you want to share a single copy of information.
There is nothing I share on this community that I am concerned about anyone on the planet getting access to.
I left forums some time ago and for me that technology, does not provide the desktop and mobile user experience I have come to expect including the built in sharing abilities.
I also have become used to much less administration overhead in fact that is a main reason why I moved to FB and G+ to start with.
Sorry, but I am not planning on going back to forums.
If we don’t find a better platform than FB when G+ dies I plan to start a FB group and see how it goes. It takes no effort on my part.
We had this exact problem with my wood turning group when Yahoo became ugly, with the same FB concerns. Now we are back to sharing and collaborating …
Wordpress is a great platform. But it would largely be a single interest per domain (e.g. http://quilting.com is only for those interested in quilting), whereas G+ and FB can have myriad interest groups that you can login to with a single account. Ease of use greases the gears. I created an account on http://mewe.com, but I haven’t actively used it yet. http://mewe.com