[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.

[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.

[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)

[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?