Join Any Good Groups Lately?
August 6, 2011 in Dot Org, Groups, How-To, Tech by JM Strother
Much of the activity here are Friday Flash Dot Org revolves around groups, or at least that is the way it is supposed to work. Most of the groups here have been pretty quite. I think this is caused by a combination of people not realizing they are there and people not knowing how they work. To help remedy this situation we are going to announce a contest soon which will revolve around a couple of groups. I’ll leave the announcement up to Estrella and don’t want to steal any of her thunder, so I’ll leave it at that, just sort of a heads-up.
Because groups are about to become more important I thought it would be a good idea to remind people of how they work. Any member of Friday Flash Dot Org can start one, and mark it public or private. If you mark it public anyone can join. If you mark it private then anyone can request membership and it will be up to you as the group administrator to approve or deny access. We get our share of spammers that try to infiltrate here, so don’t feel bad about sitting on a request for a while until you can check the person out. I just canned a spammer a few minutes ago as a matter of fact.
I’m in several groups including Criticize Me, GoodReads, and Speculative Authors.
We started the Criticize Me group as a direct response to ED Johnson’s introductory post asking you the members for suggestions on what FFDO can do for you. More in depth criticism was the single most requested feature. The group is now open, so feel free to join and contribute. I have a story in Criticize Me right now awaiting critique. Please have at it. Together we can make each other stronger.
Tim VanSant started the GoodReads group as a place for people who are in the GoodReads social network to also connect here. If you are a member of GoodReads pop on in and say hello. You might pick up a few new followers.
Speculative Authors is a group started by Anna Harte. She describes it as a group “for authors who love speculative fiction (fantasy, scifi, horror, etc) — and for those speculating whether they should be an author.” Drop in on us some time and tell us what you’re speculating about. You’ll recognize almost everyone in there and we don’t bite (at least if the moon’s not full).
The point is, start using these groups. Learn how they work. Start having fun with them. Then when Estrella makes her announcement you won’t be caught flat-footed wondering how to participate.
One other thing. There is a group called Contributors that I started before I really understood how groups worked. Now that we understand groups, we will probably delete the existing Contributors group and relaunch it in the near future with a much more clear goal in mind. Sounds mysterious, doesn’t it? If you have any reason for Contributors not to be reset, let me know and well work something out.
So, what groups are you in and how do you intend to use them?
~jon
ED Johnson is away today. Look for his regular column here next week.
Photo by Paul Stang, circa 1910, in Stongfjorden, Sogn og Fjordane Fylke, NO, using a Hasselblad/Imacon Ixpress 132C – Hasselblad H1, via FlickR Creative Commons.
Founder of the #fridayflash meme and of Friday Flash Dot Org
Jon M. Strother is a writer of fact, fiction, and bad poetry. His passion is fiction, though creative nonfiction and an occasional how-to will creep in now and then. He has written several novels and novellas, so far unpublished, many published flash fiction pieces, and created #fridayflash.
Jon lives in an inner suburb of St. Louis and enjoys cycling, gardening, and wasting far too much time playing Civilization III. Hey, we all have vices. He's got a wife and kids, and a Beagle affectionately known as Psycho-pup. Jon blogs at Mad Utopia.
In a brief Twitter exchange last week I was reminded that the Goodreads site also allows members to create groups. (There was some confusion as to whether I had created this group here on FFDO or over there.) Anyway, that got me to wondering whether I should create a Friday Flash group on Goodreads.
I searched the groups list there for “flash” and found two public groups, “Flash Fiction” and “Romance Flash.”
I think there may be a couple advantages to having a group on Goodreads:
* It is already set up for a group bookshelf
* They have a section for photos
* Group activities can be automatically posted to Facebook
Possible disadvantages include:
* Even if we make it a private group it is more difficult to limit it to FFDO members
* It’s yet another site to maintain
We can certainly host activities here and one of the reasons for starting this group was to encourage more FFDO group activity. But we’ve gotten very little response so far and we might (or might not) attract more if the group were over there. What do you think?
I’m delinquent and then some ;( but I’m blaming school, work and deadlines. I’ll have a break soon, so expect some noise
I think groups here will be slow to take off, but will take root eventually. I think for a group to be successful it needs to grow organically, be self directed by its members, and meet a real need. It may be a real niche need, but you don’t need a lot of people to fill a niche. Once people realize they can actually get real goals accomplished via a group (editing, beta reading, sharing pet photos, whatever) then they will start to use them.
If a given group never takes off, or if groups in general don’t succeed then we are probably trying to fulfill a need that does not exist. But I believe there are real needs out there, and that we have a terrific talent pool here to draw on to help meet everyone’s needs.
~jon