Get Everything Done's Facebook Page

I’m going to try to encourage people to use the Facebook page for this site, which at the moment is languishing. It’s been my fault as much as anyone else’s.

In order to get things moving a bit, I’m not going to do any further blog posts for the next week, nor am I going to take part in any discussions in the Forums. If you want to interact with me you will have to do it on Facebook.

You can of course open threads on the Facebook page yourself - you don’t have to wait for me to do so!

Comments

[matthewS]

Hello, I will take a look at the facebook page and LIKE it. What is the main reason you want to move to Facebook instead of here? Or do you want to use both? I'm curious. Reason might help us help you. My bias is that, at least for me, Facebook is just such an ugly messy environment. Where this forum is clean and elegant. However, I do realize the truth, Facebook has the largest by far group of social users on the planet. ...update... OK, looking at Facebook page, most of the posts are linked to articles here. So you are saying you want to get some interesting discussions actually happening ON the Facebook page instead of here? Or to mostly continue to find ways to link from Facebook to here?

[aus]

What if, like me, you don't use Facebook?

[matthewS]

Aha, just realized first issue I have with join a conversation on Facebook. In here I am anonymous. And part of a special private group. Now the being anonymous is not a big deal in the secret secret medical sort of way. I did use a shortcut of my name, you do have our email info. I have contacted people in here. Rather, I am not sure I want all of my current Facebook friends/family/work/world contacts to observe in a way that IS totally connected to my name/identity, questions about time/life/task planning. Just think of in an abstract way, what possible future employer might take wrong - maybe this guy does not know how to manage his time, maybe we should not hire him...

OK, this might be bordering in paranoia, I'm sure I will get over it - but the fact that I even thought of it and that it gave me pause is interesting. After all, we are all being warned that whatever we put on the internet is there forever and always searchable.

Anyone else feel this way?

[Christopher E.]

Facebook does not respect privacy. Love your work, Mark, enjoy supporting you by buying your books, etc., but the world would be a better place without Facebook.

[Wooba]

Many people can't use Facebook at work, and many more choose not to use it at all. Please keep discussion and blog posts on this publicly available website. I just took a look at the FB page, and I can't tell what is what. It is a mess. That is one reason I gave up on Facebook years ago, and it doesn't seem to have improved. Another reason was that it was, and probably still is, intrusive and distracting.

Also, Mark, you own the content on this website. If you put it on Facebook, they can do whatever they want with it. Including delete it (which has happened, frequently (apparently)).

[David D.]

Discussing time management on Facebook strikes me as only slightly less ridiculous than holding temperance society meetings at the village pub...

I'll be here when you come back.

[ubi]

I do not and will not use Facebook. I realize this disconnects me from some friends & family, and reduces the number of outlets for my commentary. But less connectivity and fewer online outlets may be advantageous!

I will miss the banter on this site, if the comments and fora all go to FB. It was a good ride.

IMO, Facebook is a fad that will fade eventually.

[Seraphim]

matthew S wrote:
<< Anyone else feel this way? >>

Yes!

[Leon]

I'm afraid I avoid Facebook like the plague. Sorry I won't be able to keep track of discussions.

[Caibre65]

Also very much against Face Book.

I can understand Mark wanting to reach a wider audience but would suggest he just copies his blog post over there as well as here. This website is very prominent on his FB page so interested FB users could easily come over here to follow discussion and comment.

I also think You Tube is a much better route. The Autofocus video produced by Taragh is very good - Mark is of course a natural communicator. It's very common for regular You Tubers to use Adsense generate ongoing income from their videos.

How about a series of 3 or 4 minute videos of Mark discussing his current ideas and past systems? A wider audience and some money coming in:)

[Lenore]

I'm sorry to see this change. I will not be lurking nearly as much on Facebook as I do here :) But also, I will be unlikely to comment at all. I would hate to see the great, focused content of this site diluted into the wastewater bilge of much of the content there. The format does not encourage thoughtful engagement. Sad to say, this may be the end of the great community you, Mark, have built here.

[Don R]

There can be a certain amount of flow between different social media in which some users use one site but not the other, users who follow the flow to another site and use it there only, or use both to different extents.

For example, I was using a web site to learn Japanese. A certain percentage of the users of the site would use the attached forum. Then there was a thread once where the users shared their Twitter names, so a certain group of us started following each other on Twitter. Then a group of the Twitter users eventually created an IRC channel and we would chat with each other about it there but also about our lives and stream movies in Japanese on Mondays etc.

In the case of Mark Forster there is the newsletter which is a group of people. Usually when there is a brand new system he'll put it there and encourage us to read it there and/or put things in the newsletter to get people to come to the site. There is also probably a lot of overlap between the blog and the forum, but even there there is sure to be a split between blog reader and forum readers, let alone probably 90%+ of forum readers who don't post.

I would suggest to treat each medium as its own entity, but allow cross-flow from media A to media B naturally by mentioning the related media in a way that might interest some users of A if they are so inclined. In the example of the Japanese forum I mentioned above, 1% of the users might have switched to Twitter but they did form a vibrant community of its own.

Blog: continue to post interesting articles on the blog, allow comments, participate in comments. Keep Facebook, forum, and newsletter (etc) on the radar so people who are interested will add those.

Forum: allow threads, participate as desired, keep things on topic if needed.

Facebook: It seems that the model of Facebook is to be viral, so that when I like, comment on, or manually share a Facebook post of yours, the people I am connected with (co-workers, friends, family) may or may not see it depending on a very complicated variation of your settings, my settings, their settings, and Facebook's algorithms to decide what to show on their news feeds based on popularity and who knows what else.

So for Facebook I would suggest: links back to blog and/or forum posts here (to allow flow of users for those who are intereste) with some text drawing out comments on Facebook itself (so that their friends might see and spread from there), things that you think people will agree with and "like" (spread).

There may not be a lot of overlap between the two communities as you can see from the comments, but a small amount may be enough to bootstrap a community. I didn't realize other people could creat posts on your page there. It was interesting to see people from here over there and another side of them from their own profiles or at least the parts they have set public.

[Michael B.]

I'm puzzled by many of the reactions I'm reading. Mark said nothing about moving this website to Facebook. He's simply trying to focus exclusively on this site's Facebook page for a week in order to heighten its visibility to readers.

[Wooba]

Michael B.,

Please don't be puzzled. If Mark is going to ignore this website, comments from his loyal users, and forum posts and carry on the conversation on Facebook, those of us who do not have access to Facebook cannot take part. Mark is central to this community -- if he isn't here, it feels like we have been dumped. I know it is only for a week, but what if some amazing discussions take place, or unique content is posted, that we don't have access to?

[Dan H]

Mark says on Facebook that he'll be away from the blog for one week only.

(Full disclosure: I like Facebook)

[Lenore]

My apologies. I did not see that Mark's FB plan is for a week only. Thanks to those who pointed it out.

[Sarah Jane]

I use Facebook a lot. I enjoy it for keeping in contact with family & friends, and for finding out about & sharing all sorts of interesting, funny, thought provoking and/or useful stuff on all sorts of things. It's a very different media to this kind of forum, and takes some getting used to. It's often much more visual, with pictures, etc. I'm probably not likely to post something on Mark's page unless it's a private group. But I would share interesting articles, amusing videos. and valuable hints & titbits if they appeared. The picture and the title on a post seem to critical as to whether something catches my eye.

[Ben H]

I don't use Facebook, so see you in a week Mark. Thanks for all you do.

[Asim Jalis]

One reason I resist Facebook is because it does not keep the posts in chronological order. So it is harder to follow a discussion. It always feel like the Facebook engagement algorithm is trying to second guess me and shift the ground from under me.