First let me say I don’t know whether to be peeved or luvey to Men with Pens for posting an article about writer’s forums on the day I was planning to do the same. I guess I’m grateful to have the link to include in my post. Oh, but isn’t the glass half full this morning!
I dragged myself kicking and screaming into the world of Facebook over the weekend. I hesitated to do this for a very long time. I had a less than optimal experience with Myspace a while back and that whole genre of social media ended up having zero interest for me. But then I started reflecting on my attitude towards Twitter and how long it took me to get on board there. After giving Twitter a good solid month I realized the value and my Twitter referrals are up nearly every day.
After spending a couple of pretty full days exploring and adding to the Tumblemoose Facebook page I decided I like it and believe that it is a valuable social networking tool for writers. There are all manner of writers, editors, publishers and others involved in the craft. They are easily accessible and seem to be a helpful lot overall. Understand that this opinion is based on a weekend getaway to the Land o’ Facebook and so it may be subject to change, but I don’t think so.
I think one of the most helpful things I discovered was the “Groups” feature. It didn’t take very long to find lively and active groups that pertain to writing. Some actually have thousands of members. A few of the groups seemed to be a bit stuffy and formal, but most appeared to be quite relaxed. I was intrigued enough to start another group: Tumblemoose Writers and Bloggers. This leads me to the next section of this post:
Writer’s Forums
So the plan was to post a little something this morning on my Facebook adventure and follow it with information and the straight scoop on forums. Well, I know a good thing when I see it and the Men With Pens article does a nice job and I’ll not duplicate their content here. If you want to take a moment and view their article, I’ll wait. (Goes and gets a fresh cup of English Breakfast…)
Ok, are you back? Good. What do you think? It looks to me like forums are probably pretty good things.
That’s why I set up Tumblemoose Writers and Bloggers over at Facebook. The set up was minimal, the posting was easy and I think that the moderating should be fairly straightforward.
I’ve already asked some questions to get discussion threads going and I guess what I’d like to see is the Tumblemoose readership head on over and join. Let’s give this a fair shot and see if we can’t expand on some of the comment discussions we’ve had over the past few months. I don’t believe all of those discussion have played out and it appears to be a good forum (no pun intended) for generating discussion.
Let me have a little feedback love, ok? Are you interested in a Tumblemoose forum? Would you like to participate but are turned off by having to join Facebook? Do you not really care at all about forums?
Twitter has become my RSS Reader
Since I’ve made Twitter a part of my daily existence, I’ve discovered that I almost never go to my RSS feeds anymore. When I’m working, I view the timeline every so often throughout the day, going backwards to my last Tweet to make sure I’ve not missed anything. What I’ve found is that since most of my community is on Twitter, and most of them Tweet a new post, I get to head right on over, read and comment. What’s more, a lot of times, I get the heralded #1 comment spot – even on the big boy blogs.
What do you think? Will Twitter replace RSS?
Finally
Most of you know that Tumblemoose is only about three months old. That’s a premie in blog -years. I was over at my Google account over the weekend and did a little update to my Adsense. Just for giggles I headed over to my account stats and discoverd I’ve made about 50 bucks over the life of the blog, with a steady upward “trend” – I don’t know, can you call three months a trend? Coolio! What great incentive to get on it and work the traffic numbers and do everything I can to move Tumblemoose forward!
Whew! I’m glad I got all of that out there. Now let’s hear from my large and adoring audience! 
