RickLewis wrote:I can't totally see the point of Twitter...
A mystery here as well. I've been working online since before the first Netscape browser. Twitter, social networking in general, makes me feel like a "just don't get it" Internet newbie all over again. Which is educational.
As best I can tell, social networking is the online equivalent of offline cocktail party chit chat, where the energy exchange between people is more important than the actual content.
I love forums, which seem designed to facilitate topic focused conversations.
It makes sense really. Consider social life before the Net. Casual chit chat was very very common, and topic focused conversations were relatively rare. So, nothing has changed now that we've all moved online.
RickLewis wrote:...but it's where the people are. Not just a few - I mean vast, vast numbers in the many millions. As part of the point of Philosophy Now is to reach the widest possible public with good quality philosophy, how can we not go there? Same with Facebook.
Yea, that's the point, marketing, well said.
The challenge would seem to be, you can lead the horse to water, but can you make it drink? Boiling these topics down to 140 character chit chat chunks is a worthy writing challenge. Best of luck!
There are lots of intelligent, thoughtful people using both sites (for whatever reason) and if we can go there and reach some of them then that's got to be a good thing.
Yes, you are doing us a service by working to expand the membership here. Thanks for that.
Another challenge to consider perhaps.
Any of the people on Facebook/Twitter could have searched Google for "philosophy forum" at any time, and if they had, they'd already be here.
If you succeed in opening a new member stream from these social sites, you may find that these new members are, on average, more inclined to goofing around than serious dialog. If that's not what you want, then the moderation duties may also become more challenging.
Another alternative:
I see this site is #6 in Google results for the search term "philosophy forum". Which is good!
According to Yahoo SiteExplorer,
http://forum.philosophynow.org has only 80 incoming links. If you can boost that link count, you might be able to get up in to the top three search results, which could possibly significantly increase traffic from folks who are actually searching for what you have to offer.
That is, thirsty horses that already want to drink.