Here is my very quick two cents, on a much, much bigger and more difficult subject.

-- There is "content" -- images, information, messages, blog postings, questions and answers, alerts, press releases.

-- There are are "outlets" -- webpages, print magazines, blogs, discussion forums, Tweets, Facebook. photo sharing sites (like Flickr), other communities (Watchonista)

-- Within any of these outlets, there are different formats -- for example, within a website like OnTheDash, there are webpages with content, image galleries, reference tables, special sections, special pages, etc. Within Facebook, there is the Wall and image galleries, as well as discussion forums, likes and dislikes, comments, etc.

It is challenging to get all the right "content" (information) in the right place. For example, there is a huge amount of information (and a treasure trove of photos) posted on this forum, that should be "harvested" and added to OnTheDash.com, but I am only able to capture a small amount of the content for OnTheDash . . . there is just not enough time to manage all this. In a perfect world -- in which I spent 40 to 80 hours per week on these websites -- all the good information and images from this discussion forum would be permanently located in the correct place within OnTheDash.com, so that the reader can find it. Indeed, a discussion forum is not the ideal place for the long-term storage of information, but the "search" feature on this forum saves us in many instances.

It is often difficult to determine the best outlet (or format) for a specific piece of content. So far, I have not found Facebook to be the right outlet for what we are doing, as a community. This could change, and I sometimes wonder whether Facebook (and perhaps other social media, like blogs) might overwhelm the traditional websites. For example, I see some fantastic websites organized around blogs and I wonder whether that is the wave of the future. But, for now, I am happy where we are, at least compared with the task of converting all this to some other outlet or format (and, at the moment, I'm not sure what that alternative outlet or format might be). There are experts who study this and do it for a living -- optimizing the content, the outlet, the formats, etc. I don't even really know the language of this discussion, but it's something that I think about.

This is a great topic, and one that is worth discussing from time to time.

Jeff

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

: I totally agree with Jeff.

: OnTheDash is our "clubhouse".

: With all respect for Facebook, Twitter, and all these other kind of
: temporary things.....these are rubbish to me, and a waste of
: time (but again...that's my personal meaning). Time I already
: have not enough.

: All you need is OTD :-)

: Cheers,
: Abel.