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> That's amazing. I've seen similar things the other way around. Someone didn't use Facebook. People didn't switch; they got left out and forgotten. I probably

> That's amazing. I've seen similar things the other way around. Someone didn't use Facebook. People didn't switch; they got left out and forgotten. I probably should have said it was a tech-savvy academic community, and a somewhat small one (ca. 50 people). > Another one was Google Groups (a type of mailing list). Someone didn't want to use a Google account. They couldn't figure out how to subscribe. Was the group willing to switch to another provider? No of course not. In the end an admin manually subscribed the person with their non-Google address, but if that hadn't been possible, the group would have let them go rather than switch service. Google groups was what we ended up with, after facebook caused resistance. The thing with google groups is, it's not really a walled garden -- it's just a mailing list; you have all your data archived in your email unless you choose to delete it yourself, and if it fails for whatever reason, you can just manually send an email with a huge Bcc instead. Google in generally is pretty good at "export all your data"; while partly due to antitrust pressure, I think that this is mainly a way to keep the techie audience semi-loyal. I am more worried about github/lab, ironically, due to the "superstructure" they add on top of the repositories (issue trackers mostly). In theory there are tools that can export all of it "back" into the repository, but in practice people are loath to use them. > Yes and no. Everyone uses email, but many only use it inside Gmail, which is a bit of a mess if you're subscribed to a bunch of mailing lists, and trying to keep track of events you've been invited to. Anything is a mess if you need to keep track of lots of events. Has Facebook figured out how to make calendars non-confusing?

jlokier 6y ago
> The thing with google groups is, it's not really a walled garden -- it's just a mailing lis Yes and no. It's not much of a mailing list for the people without Google accounts who couldn't figure out how to subscribe after Google made the documentation for doing that hard to find (they used to have a decent page about it that was removed). That's quite different from other mailing lists. Thus the anecdote about someone who asked how to subscribe, which was solved by a group admin manually subscribing them. I'm certain we lost a number of other people who didn't want to bother an admin enough to ask for help, and just gave up. What we found over time is, eventually, a lot of the people reading the group thought it was a forum, and either posted via the Google Groups web interface (never using email), or didn't post (and therefore interact) because clicking the Post button took them to the Google login/signup page, and that put some of them off. > Anything is a mess if you need to keep track of lots of events. Has Facebook figured out how to make calendars non-confusing? I find Meetup ok for this, because I can see in chronological order what I found interesting today and in the next week or so. It tells me what's the next event I signed up to. And I can see a good selection in chronological order that I might like to take an interest in, because I signed up to a bunch of groups. Facebook events also seems to be ok if you are only ever invited to very few events on it, as I am. I still miss them because I only login about once every 2 months these days :-)

jlokier 6y ago

> The thing with google groups is, it's not really a walled garden -- it's just a mailing lis Yes and no. It's not much of a mailing list for the people without Google accounts who couldn't figure out how to subscribe after Google made the documentation for doing that hard to find (they used to have a decent page about it that was removed). That's quite different from other mailing lists. Thus the anecdote about someone who asked how to subscribe, which was solved by a group admin manually subscribing them. I'm certain we lost a number of other people who didn't want to bother an admin enough to ask for help, and just gave up. What we found over time is, eventually, a lot of the people reading the group thought it was a forum, and either posted via the Google Groups web interface (never using email), or didn't post (and therefore interact) because clicking the Post button took them to the Google login/signup page, and that put some of them off. > Anything is a mess if you need to keep track of lots of events. Has Facebook figured out how to make calendars non-confusing? I find Meetup ok for this, because I can see in chronological order what I found interesting today and in the next week or so. It tells me what's the next event I signed up to. And I can see a good selection in chronological order that I might like to take an interest in, because I signed up to a bunch of groups. Facebook events also seems to be ok if you are only ever invited to very few events on it, as I am. I still miss them because I only login about once every 2 months these days :-)