Social Media or Forums

[Dearth]

As the title states which one do you use more of in the hobby to help, read up on, learn about or do you use something else

I personally use the forums a lot as there is a ton of good information on them but social media like FB is becoming more popular but I feel you lose a lot of information on social media

What is your preference

[DKoKoMan]

It a huge social media fan, so I use the forums for most of my information.

[MitchM]

I use forums the most, I think they organize information the best.
Forums need to integrate more with Facebook.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

98% forums for my aquatic hobbies. Best source of info. Most of my fish-friends are from BCAquaria & Canreef forums. Most of my best deals are too.

Social media may be good for businesses, but info is hard to find because its not archived in any organized way on a FB page.

[intarsiabox]

I guess it depends on what your local Facebook pages have to offer. The couple local pages I look at from just one city get more posts in a day than Canreef does in a week. You can use the search function on Facebook Group pages just like any forums but usually people just ask their questions and get fresh answers. I prefer this over asking questions on forums because people don't usually give the typical response of "use the search function" or behave like jackasses because they have a high post count. The buy and sell portion isn't even comparable in my local market. Of course this is just my experience based on my particular location, lots of other places probably don't have much of a local SW following and social media outlets would be fairly useless.

[Galizio]

Forums are more organized and easy to find stuff in my experience. So forum for me


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[DKoKoMan]

Originally Posted by intarsiabox

The buy and sell portion isn't even comparable in my local market.

Where are you looking? The only group I know of is the Edmonton but & sell. I'm always tying to find local people who have decent priced frags for sale.

[corpusse]

Social media is taking over buy and sells, especially since there are less restrictions, but message boards imo still provide a lot more value as far as information and documentation (tank journals, breeding logs ect).

The problem with medium sized boards such as this one is staying relevant when there are much larger boards when you are looking for answers as far issues.

Canreef is also non localized although from the outside looking in it's primarily people on the west coast of Canada what is available in AB has no baring on BC, let alone ON or another province. The larger problem may be the business model as these types of message boards are no longer as lucrative as they once were for the owners. Take J&L who recently stopped sponsoring. I see people commenting on how they will lose money but if you've been shopping there for years, you are likely going to continue shopping there regardless of the banner. If new places come up to sponsor sure you may try them out, but unless it's a brand new store it's likely hard to convince them the investment is worthwhile when things have been trending downward for some time. That being said basement shops probably could still take advantage of a forum type situation as you'd be reaching all over Canada (in the case of canreef) vs your local facebook groups.

I've never been a big time poster here, but I have been a member for 10 years and will continue to check it out and as long as there is something to read or look at I will continue to visit.

It could be much worse. Look at AP...

[WarDog]

Originally Posted by corpusse

It could be much worse. Look at AP...

AP?

Extremely eye opening numbers that frankly, I was not expecting. Hopefully Titus sees this, perhaps it could get the new Canreef here sooner.

[MitchM]

No offence intended, but Canreef would benefit most with a new owner.

Forums have low costs and need members, Facebook is free, but vendors are difficult to find unless you know what exactly to search for.
Surely there is a way to integrate the two for the benefit of all users.