Propriétaires de forums, comment "lutter" contre les groupes Facebook ?

I really liked your list of actions btw. Creating superior structured content locally is the best way to go.

My concern is strategically we are feeding the lion and without coordinated mass abstention we sustain the original status quo. But ultimately I reluctantly accept reality!

Yes I’m aware I’m giving Google a pass and that’s a little biased perhaps but at least they support ‘the open web’ … at least for now.

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I have tried with the title + Link + Short description. But the reach of the posts is not much.

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Hello,

I think it’s more person-dependent. Members trust and follow the leaders. So I targeted the fb group admins to cooperate and one of the biggest former fb group admin joined us. He started advertising our forum in his group. People started coming more than before just because he suggested us…

I’m trying to turn the forum more like a social site in every way. The “forum” word: People think this is just another old school forum from 2000s. So I just called the forum: on our brand or Community. I completely remove the forum word. (It is much easier to change a word than their way of thinking.) That needed because people judge before they open the website. So there was a lots of time they just commented on fb —just another forum… etc. they actually didn’t click the link.

Interface and features

It also looks more like Facebook, unfortunately people more familiar this. First time I used category for homepage but now I just figured out the latest page is much better for communities it generate more activities from users.

I added a lot of features which makes it much better than Facebook.

Trading, auction, user ratings, trusted sellers, etc.
People like badges and avatar flairs, each group has an avatar flair which is appears next to users avatar.

Compare

I compare the forum with Facebook. People only knows Facebook so I have to highlight those things which is bad at there. What people don’t like on Facebook.

Facebook is full of bullying what we not tolerate and don’t accept on the forum this is a much more controllable place than fb. The trust level system add us the biggest ability to control these people… So people are much friendlier than on fb…

I never want to see a Facebook content on our forum! Forum is the quality contents place not the instant posts from Facebook. So I do the opposite I share quality content from the Forum to Facebook BUT I disable the comment section! That is important…. If they want to reply to the topic they have to register and reply on the Forum.

Cooperation with Members

I initiate the community into everything and I ask them before do anything. I created a category where they can send their ideas about the forum, Community and everything…

I always notify members when made any changes. Every Sunday I share them an update topic and summarize the weekly changes, development and everything. If something not clear they can ask and we can talk about it like a great big family. :slightly_smiling_face:

One other point is we can customize the Forum what Members needs! You cannot do that on Facebook.

And last but not least we are all the same in our Community!

These things makes the forum much better for quality members. I think this community is more cohesive and healthy. You have to show the way them. This is a very slow process but if one time they find your forum they never want to go back to Facebook.

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I didn’t realize Zapier had a “short description” of the post. I’m going to switch mine to this. I’m currently using the full post, this is way too much for Facebook. Have you tried Twitter? I focus more of my social media marketing on Twitter than Facebook. I’ve organically grown my follower count to over 300. I know of some Twitter bots that could help with faster follower growth, but I’m worried about risking a suspension/ban on my account.

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You may not know, but a post with no title or it is below will have higher engagement.

  • Description
  • Title

About Zapier I have up a number of scripts to try the integrated version, but it only includes articles and raw htm (When posting, FB does not recognize the format as handwriting).

So I am building via Rss here which will describe the short customization.

I will try it! sure.

Twitter tried it out from a programmer’s perspective, I just cross-post auto + summary content.

But since the account is less tracked, it doesn’t work well. Instead of buying, I think running targeted ads will generate better tracking.

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I agree that ease of access is probably a significant aspect. But…

Have you considered that design, “friendliness” (of aesthetic), and ease of use or familiarity may also be major factors? I love Discourse, I participate in at least 5 Discourse forums regularly. But I recently started testing out Circle.so and while it is definitely inferior in many respects, even I actually liked some of its aesthetic and UX choices. More here:

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How did you setup the auction and trade sites? Did you use a plugin?

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anything is possible is you put your mind to it :slight_smile:

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this is the ticket. niche niche niche.

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How are webstore in Discourse helping fight against Facebook groups? E-commerce is totally different thing than groups or forums.

I have very profitable webshop and really active Facebook group connected to it, and Discourse forum that is practically dead, No one will change from group to forum.

Main reasons are

  • everybody are in Facebook
  • Discourse is way too difficult and editor is strange (I agree, coding scene loves markdown, rest of world not so much)

For me it took about one year to build up active group with 25 000 members. Forum has been up now a year and there is 300 registrations and three active members :upside_down_face:

Yes, 99-1 rule rules :slight_smile:

My target group are mostly women without any bigger intrest to tech — they are the most challenging group to get out from Facebook, I reckon.

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In addition to these two I would add the Notification System is way too difficult and strange. When people see “Dismiss” they expect to clear the list, and when nothing seems to happen when they hit dismiss that is extremely disconcerting and introduces doubt into the way everything else works too. I am finding that my users are not able to trace simple things like seeing who has posted what recent updates, and that they way people generally use my other forums (look for the red dot to see “new” events, and navigate to them from the notifications screen) is almost unusable in Discourse.

Would be interested if anyone has suggestions or plugins on how to improve notifications.

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Facebook’s app is the killer feature here. Dead easy to set up, push notifications. Easy and snappy to use.

When trying to cure my internet addiction, one of the first things I did was remove the FB and Twitter apps. Worked well to reduce my casual use of those sites.

The Discourse Hub iOS app is a good alternative but not as easy for the user to set up, and lacks push notifications. Notifications really make a difference.

I recently migrated a Vanilla forum to Discourse. It acts as the “discussion section” of a website I run. When I created a live notification badge (just a simple update count) on the main website, showing a count of new posts in the forum, it massively drew people from my website into the forum.

Update badges, push notifications etc, these are things that stimulate interest. At present Facebook does a better job than Discourse Hub. If we could easily “white label” Discourse Hub for our own forums, and get push notifications working, it’d help a lot in the fight against Zuck’s oligopoly.

Note - I think Discourse’s commercial offering does indeed feature push notifications.

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Unable to compete with Facebook groups, it is now the era of mobile internet. If you want netizens to use your forum more, you must have functions that cannot be realized on platforms like Facebook, or unique functions that users like. Forums are declining, and it’s the same all over the world. Even in China, forums are dying.

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Translation:

Unable to fight Facebook groups, this is the age of the mobile Internet. If you want internet users to use your forums more, you must have features that are not available on platforms such as Facebook, or unique features that users like. The forum is gone, the world is the same. Even in China, forums are dying out.

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Mon forum principal est bien vivant, car les gens continueront à chercher sur Google (ou DuckDuckGo) un sujet et verront apparaître dans les résultats de recherche ma communauté de niche tout en haut.

Facebook ne peut pas faire cela ni empêcher mon site d’apparaître.

Facebook a essayé et échoué à remplacer l’Internet ouvert, tout comme Apple et son obsession pour les « applications » natives (qui meurent aussi, les applications payantes sont presque complètement mortes).

Ce n’est pas l’avenir. Facebook est une mode passagère. Facebook est une façade énormément coûteuse. Leurs coûts ne feront qu’augmenter s’ils sont contraints de contrôler plus strictement le contenu et d’en assumer l’entière responsabilité. Et ce faisant, ils aliéneront également les utilisateurs (et ils font déjà un assez bon travail !).

La révolution du cloud signifie que mes coûts sont minuscules !

L’Internet ouvert prévaudra car la plupart des technologues ne travaillent pas pour Facebook et veulent que leurs produits soient visibles sur les moteurs de recherche.

Reddit est probablement un rival plus important, mais ce combat est sur des termes plus équitables.

Je réalise que « l’Internet ouvert » est un rêve dans certains pays, mais c’est quelque chose que de nombreux pays chercheront à défendre, tandis que d’autres chercheront malheureusement à le contrôler. :grimacing:

Nous devons faire tout ce qui est en notre pouvoir pour résister à ces monopoles !

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Eh bien, il y a l’effort de contre-poussée de la décentralisation « web3 », qui couvre certains aspects de cela.

L’idée est de créer un web décentralisé, où les utilisateurs peuvent transporter leurs données d’un service à l’autre sans que des jardins clos d’entreprise ne les en empêchent.

Bienvenue dans notre monde depuis 2013, fans du web3… nous vous attendions. :wink:

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Je viens de finir de lire le sujet La communauté n’a pas de frontière : Discourse comme tissu - idéation et brainstorming et à la lumière de cette discussion, je suis très curieux de comprendre comment vous pensez que Discourse permet aux utilisateurs de « transporter leurs données de service en service ». N’est-ce pas exactement de cela dont il est question dans ce fil de discussion en tant que pièce manquante de l’ensemble des fonctionnalités de Discourse ?

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Je suis un peu confus ici. Quelles données devraient pouvoir être transportées entre différents Discourse ou entre d’autres services et Discourse ?

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Avez-vous lu le sujet « La communauté n’a pas de frontières » que j’ai lié, ou quoi que ce soit sur ActivityPub, la fédération, etc. ? Il y a des tonnes de discussions sur les candidats possibles pour une telle « portabilité », interopérabilité, fédération, etc. À vous de choisir. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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