[jsaxton86]

I moved out of state a couple of years ago, and when I stopped using Facebook, I realized:

1: Facebook never was a good way of keeping in touch with friends and family back home for a number of reasons

2: I needed to be doing a better job of keeping in touch with friends and family back home

My solution was to set up a newsletter. The idea is every 3-4 months I send out a mass email to friends and family describing what I've been up to lately. It's been a huge win for me for a few reasons:

1: Everyone uses email, so I can reach with friends and family who don't use Facebook. I think my grandmother is my biggest newsletter fan, and is always encouraging me to publish more frequently.

2: I'd rather share a well-written email (with lots of links to my self-hosted photo gallery), than a series of short status updates that may or may not be read by people I want to keep in touch with. Also, a lot of the information I share in the newsletter I wouldn't share on Facebook. Not because it's super private or anything, but I'm not going to post a status update that basically says "My living situation is pretty good right now. I'm renting a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and my commute is fantastic!"

3: I never really enjoyed checking Facebook, but I did it out of habit/addiction. Quitting cold turkey has made me a happier person.

The feedback I have gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. I got a number of really good responses to the newsletter in which friends and family provided similar updates. It even inspired a friend of mine to write his own newsletter. These responses were great, and much better than any information I would have gleaned from Facebook.

The biggest downside is that people still try to contact me via Facebook. For the most part, it hasn't been a problem, except for the time I missed an invitation for a week-long hiking trip in Glacier National Park. I should probably cancel my Facebook account, but I'm not ready to do that yet.

Edit: I should add I don't use TinyLetter. I instead send out a mass email via gmail. It has worked well so far, but I don't have a good way of adding subscribers except via word-of-mouth. Maybe I should investigate TinyLetter.

[e12e]

> I'm not going to post a status update that basically says "My living situation is pretty good right now. I'm renting a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and my commute is fantastic!"

Why not? (Genuine question: why would you not share such a thing on fb, but share it with a large group via email?)

> The biggest downside is that people still try to contact me via Facebook.

While they've gotten worse, fb email notifications aren't all that terrible, especially if you don't participate in discussions on popular fb pages (ie: you only get mail about event invites, new messages).

Nice to hear you've been able to stay connected via email. I'd probably've set up a "private" mailman list, especially now thar mailman3 has a half-decent archive/web interface.

Bit strange to hear you complain about signup though... can't people just send you an email? I'd think word-of-mouth/email would be an improvement over fb in your use-case?

Also interesting to hear how different sub-networks on fb can be. Both in terms of "everyone uses email (sadly, not in my circles - at least for non-work stuff), and wrt what you/others share.

[rdtsc]

I think email works better because people perceive it as a more direct message just to them. If say, you send an email and bcc people on it, they feel like they were sent a direct one-on-one personal message (even if they objectively know it is a newsletter). Status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc, when it was obvious that they are for multiple people not just a one-to-one message don't produce the same effect. People don't feel like they have to respond because someone else can respond instead.

[TeMPOraL]

I think the difference is subtle, but a little different. Status updates on Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel like a part of the service - something that exists on Facebook. By checking your timeline you're only looking at events that exist elsewhere. On the other hand, receiving a mail feels like it came to you. It does not exist as an entity somewhere in the world, it's a message that came to your inbox (and possibly to others in the CC/BCC field).

It's sort of like receiving a letter vs. reading something on a pubic notice board. The former is yours, the latter is in public space.

[tmail21]

I think you hit the nail on the head. An email is yours in the sense that once sent to you, the sender cannot 'take it away' or 'modify it' or 'delete it'.

This is different than many other 'communication protocols' out there such as Facebook Posts, Twitter Posts, Slack comments, Shared Docs etc. which all have the notion of an 'owner' who can retract permissions, modify, delete etc. after 'send'. The email analogy would be the sender reaching into your inbox and deleting or modifying your email (ugh!). This is fundamentally what gives email the feel that there is no favored owner. Conversely, every recipient can feel that the email is theirs.

We're launching an email-like service, (https://tmail21.com) in the next couple of weeks. Our premise is to preserve the best aspects of email while fixing or improving on the worst.

We think one of the best aspects of email is the aforementioned 'democratic' (i.e. no favored owner) characteristic.

[digi_owl]

Reminds me that at one point Heinlein requested that any letter etc he had sent people were to be returned, so he could burn them...

[tmail21]

Obviously Heinlein had not encountered Facebook where no random thought is too minor to be broadcast to all your 'friends' :)

[fallat]

I'm thinking of setting up "gateways", like bitlbee, so I can do:

To: facebook#post#friends@localhost

Subject:

Body:

Hey this is a post to Facebook, from email!

[rdtsc]

Exactly. I think you put it better into words than me.

[TeMPOraL]

It's a subtle feeling. I spent like 10 minutes rewriting my comment because it was hard to express it precisely.

[joe_the_user]

Once a newsletter reaches a certain size, it feel less personal than even a Facebook post. But with a small circulation, sure.

[joe_the_user]

I applaud your energy and focus. If I had more energy and focus myself, I would be something, perhaps to keep up with subcultures of interest rather than old friends.

But that said, I think I'm similar to most people in not being easily able to jump to newsletter type activity. The thing is, if I were to do that, it would still be me relating to N other people rather than, say, all those N other people also relating to each other. That might make things even better for me but I don't see how that's an improvement over Facebook.

Facebook has given me a relationship of sorts with 30-40 people who I previously hadn't interacted with for 10 or even twenty years and lets me barely keep up relations with a number of others. That includes people I'd lost contact with BEFORE the Internet even began.

Most people who aren't on Facebook aren't starting newsletters, they're just isolated - maybe one of their friends sends them a newsletter. I would see one in ten people with a newsletter for all ten as not a desirable replacement to eight in ten people having a way to directly relate to each other.

And certainly electronic media produces all sorts of problems for things-like-community, especially face to face community but that's a bigger issue than Facebook in particular.

[WWKong]

I'm glad you got good response. I suspect for most people, including me, the treatment would be the same as any other newsletter.

[diqu]

But would you argue that this is a flaw in the model of mail or in the perception and attitude towards emails and newsletters? If it's the latter, well, that's up to each themselves, and would deem mails and newsletters a still-viable way of notifying reliably about updates. While, if there are actual, inherent flaws in the idea of aggregated mails that make you and others dismiss them, another approach might in fact be better. N.B.: There at least seems to be a curious niche where even daily newsletters like thelistserve.com or nowiknow.com have their little space, for whatever that's worth.

[qq66]

I think that's the expectation, as it is with Facebook updates -- that most people who see your post will ignore it, but they will be generally aware of it in case they do feel like reading it.

[joe_the_user]

The "like" may seem kind of petty but it is a way for people to note that they did read what you wrote without them having to draft a reply of some sort. In that sense, "likes" are very useful.

[libso]

Point 1 is true for me as well. But I take a different approach in doing Point 2.

Since everyone has a gmail account (at least my target audience) and hardly have any activity on G+, I created a G+ community with just the right people and post updates there. These updates automatically send notifications via email to the community members.

The way content is organized and presented in a community is much better than email IMO. Of course everything can be translated to email - comments can be reply with text and likes/+1s can be reply with +1 - but looking back, it is a much better user experience to do this in a community/group rather than email.

[e12e]

But g+ notifications are still crap? Like fb, they don't contain (all) content and can't be interacted with. So you have the option of running the g+ app, and getting alerts for all g+ activity, or need to remember to check g+ in addition to your email. While with a proper mailing list and filtering you can see with a glance how many unread messages you have, and you can priortize based on list (eg: announce vs discuss vs meetup etc)

[ajro]

Newsletter is not connecting your subscribers together - add that and you have good old mailing list. One of my friends created such a mailing list for our circle of friends some time ago but it didn't win with the Facebook.

[estonian]

But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address. You can also remember them easier and communicate with them faster.

Most of the people I met this summer didn't have an American phone number so Facebook (or Whatsapp) was the only way to communicate with them.

[detaro]

> But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address.

Really depends on the setting. Quite a few people I know would be more comfortable sharing a mail address than their Facebook info, even if we ignore the percentage that doesn't even have Facebook.

(For quick messaging contacts the fragmentation of messengers is really annoying. I don't want 4-6 different messengers on my phone just to be prepared to communicate with everybody. It's really time for a push back to federation or at least proper multi-protocol clients)

[justizin]

>> But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address. >Really depends on the setting. Quite a few people I know would be more comfortable sharing a mail address than their Facebook info, even if we ignore the percentage that doesn't even have Facebook.

This is part of what's backwards about Facebook. Sometimes I've had a 5-15min conversation with someone at a bar and they're like, "Do you have Facebook?", and I'm like, "Give me your phone", and I will search for myself and send myself a friend request.

If I exchanged phone numbers or e-mail addresses with this person, it would be really odd IMO to ask the sort of questions to which answers are offered to me by facebook, and by its' algorithm, but _less_ odd to personally contact them IMO. So I'm kind of a wierd voyeur in basically a handful of strangers' lives and fairly rarely actually ever again meet up and do things with various people that seem to be a lot of fun to talk to when I meet them.

I've had a lot of interesting friendship circumstances arise, but also just spend a lot of time wondering who the fuck most of the people are, even on the new facebook. Even the people I decided to carry over, I don't know, it's a semi-random distribution based on how Facebook was already filtering my feed, I think. People I like, but I dunno.

It feels like Facebook has more influence over who I think about than I do at times, and I wonder if it isn't influenced by what relationships tell them things they can advertise based on or something.

[detaro]

Hadn't thought about that aspect, but that's of course right: a random mail address only gives you a way to contact someone, but not other context.

It's great if you have something specific you want to follow up on, otherwise it just gets filed away. Or can be used to give Facebook/Twitter/whatever else information the next day if you want to (after thinking about it). Mail addresses can be more anonymous and easier to dispose in that way, if you have clearly separated ones.

[simoncion]

> But getting someone's Facebook is less socially awkward than their email address.

I don't understand why this would be. Would you explain why -for your cohort- this is true?

[greedo]

I don't use FB at all for my work; though my coworkers can obviously look me up. I only use it for family, friends, and try to keep it sanitary. I don't want my coworkers knowing my private life, and Facebook makes it difficult to have discrete sharing amongst different "classes" of friends.

[lmm]

An email address feels more intimate - it's something a romantic partner would have but a friend wouldn't necessarily. And asking someone for an email address is asking them to spend thirty seconds spelling things out (particularly in a bar), and another thirty waiting for you to send them an email to confirm. Facebook is just a question of typing their name, which you already know - often it can autocomplete based on your network - and they get a notification if you've done it right without needing any extra step.

[simoncion]

I appreciate the reply, but I was rather interested in estonian's thoughts on the matter.

But, while we're here:

> Facebook is just a question of typing their name...

Many folks in my peer group used an (often oddly-spelled) nym when they created their Facebook account long, long ago. (Also, many folks in my peer group abandoned their FB account long ago, but that's another matter entirely. ;) )

> ...and another thirty [seconds] waiting for you to send them an email to confirm.

They way I've seen this handled is to either show the person how you spelt the email address, or have them wait for the "new email" notification to confirm that you did, indeed spell the address correctly.

Yet another way is to hand your conversation partner a business card.

[lmm]

Your cohort carries business cards? They seem so... old. And wouldn't they have your business email rather than your personal one?

[simoncion]

The minority of them do, yes. And they never carry work business cards[0]; these are personal "business" cards. (I guess the name is a bit of a misnomer in this case. ;) )

[0] Doing so would be really, really strange for anyone who wasn't in sales [1] (and even then, it would be a little strange).

[1] Or, I guess, one of the founders of a tiny startup.

[jschwartzi]

I feel like the typing/confirmation issue could be solved by adding a QR code generator to your email app, and having them scan the QR code on your phone to share details.

You already have your phone out, and they probably have to take theirs out to confirm, so it doesn't add anything that doesn't already exist. But this application of QR Codes saves typing in a good way.

[detaro]

Assuming the other person has a QR code reader app and knows how to use it.

And if you want their info vs giving them yours, then they also have to know how to get their address displayed as a code.

Technically no problem, in practice I wouldn't expect it to work.

[saryant]

Facebook used to have this feature but I can't find it anymore. I only found out about it after meeting someone in Tokyo and have never been able to find the feature since which leads me to wonder if it's geofenced.