There are still plenty of kids doing Facebook. It might not be their first choice. Facebook seems to be more popular with my generation and older. Thats a good thing because my generation is the generation with younger kids. I wont go into the FB thing since most know where I stand on the matter. If you want to spread the hobby, social media, especially Facebook is the best way to do it. Perfect example is that video that went viral, someone posted of the train plowing. It only took a day or so to go viral and brought a increase of traffic and membership on the FB train pages. I have videos and pictures that have gotten over 7k views and shared over 100 times within a few days. I like seeing that because it shows what I am doing on my page has paid off. Creating a FB page for my RR has been well worth it. I get people messaging me or commenting on how they can get started int the hobby or switch over to live steam. I have never seen the forums get that many hits in a year. for me I enjoying seeing pictures and what people are running at the moment. Yes forums are better for build logs and projects but it only reaches out to a limited number of people. Another great thing is posting pictures. It doesn’t get easier and you can copy and paste those pictures into the forums. As far as people (cough cough Bob) say there is a security risk, that,s a bunch of BS. (you can argue with me all day about it but unless you show me physical proof don’t waste my time) I look at my FB and there is nothing there that is at risk, no SS num, bank account num, etc…Just set your privacy settings properly, watch what you post and your fine.
Anyway if your looking for a way to get more people involved and interested FB is the way to do it today. I find it is an easy way to look back and reflect on my progress Its an easy way for me to just pull my phone out and show someone that has an interest and want to know what our hobby is about, without me telling them to go google such and such. Most will forget or not be bothered with it.
One more thing. Yes things get lost easier on FB but that’s only because there is a much larger num of people on it and posting. You go to the train ages with less people and the topics stay much longer vs the pages with a high membership. Forums we don’t get nearly the number of people posting on FB so the forum topics don’t disappear to the next page as fast. Its nice always seeing new things on FB, where as the forums, a lot of the topics go stale with no new posts or very little activity. Either way they are both great tools for different reasons.
