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FB is RSS for non-tech content. In my experience FB is what you make it to be. It requires some curration effort but you can mold it to be useful. But you can’
by grujicd 5y ago
FB is RSS for non-tech content.
In my experience FB is what you make it to be. It requires some curration effort but you can mold it to be useful. But you can’t just add, you’ll have to block as well, including ads - each ad source can be turned off.
For me, FB is the main source of news about local concerts. Sure, you’ll find about major ones anyway, but there’s no way to effectively track small ones. It doesn’t have to be music. FB is the easiest way to track niche local businesses, events, or groups of interest. Some of them even don’t have web sites and FB is where they post. Even when they have sites, you wouldn’t visit each of them every day to find out what is new and interesting and you’ll miss stuff.
- fer 5y agoIf concert info is what keeps you on the platform, you can kick FB out of your life with Bandsintown.
- grujicd 5y agoIt's not that useful in my part of world. Also, I'm not only interested in pop/rock bands. I also want jazz, classical, movie festivals, etc. That's why I follow handful of small venues, organizers and cultural magazines. It's all very niche and hard to follow otherwise. For instance there's no way I would find about "Days of Organ music" few months ago. I didn't even know that there's a catholic cathedral with pipe organ in Belgrade, most churches here are orthodox and they don't have pipe organs. This is just an example. There are other kinds of local interests you can only follow effectively on FB - hiking groups, sales in local music stores, environmental protests, whatever rocks your boat.
- fer 5y agoFair enough, for me it's fairly useful even with niche genres, but promoters around here tend to use it too (or the info gets scraped because the area has more things going on). I've had free open air (no venue) concerts of Balkan folk pop in there!
- legulere 5y agoIt’s not. With RSS you are in charge, as you select exactly which feeds you subscribe to and see everything from those feeds. Facebook hides posts from things you subscribed to and shows you stuff you didn’t subscribe to, to keep you hooked.
- grujicd 5y agoI agree. Not perfect. But there's no alternative to this kind of curated local content.
- oska 5y agoI don't mean to sound like a smartarse here but there would be if more ppl stopped using FB (which seems to be the trend anyway).
- grujicd 5y agoProblem is we have dozens of various interests, which are different for each one of us. Single interest platforms can be good for only subset of things. FB does come with lots of strings attached. We're all aware of that. I'm just suggesting that, with some effort of unfollowing and blocking, it can be useful.
- oska 5y agoBut the web isn't "single interest" and, as you yourself referenced, there are open standard ways (RSS) to compile information from across it. This may have evolved more without FB so heavily dominating the scene.
- grujicd 5y agoMost of this long-tail stuff we're talking about here had minimal or no web presence before FB created "alternative web publishing" experience for them. And centralized easy experience for their audience to follow what they like. I still use RSS, but sadly, that's not where I find news from local music school or running group. Could it end up differently if FB didn't show up? Quite possibly.
- berkes 5y agoThere are niche solution for all such niches. Spotify has the best concert agenda for my town. There's two local publishers doing online presentation for businesses here (one is indebuurt). Not surprising though. That small, focused, local niche solutions are more effective than a giant behemoth can ever be. Yes, FB has all the data. But it needs to analyze that in tiny contexts before it can build a tailored solution for that context, first.