Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Facebook Jumps the Shark; Or I do

So the Grays (new page coming) need to recruit some new players, in particular some young ones. The core of the team has now been playing bare-handed overhand base ball for a decade and are starting to taper off for various reasons. Finding new players through our existing social networks has tended to make our rookies the same age (or older) as our veterans, so we need a marketing strategy to reach young men in their early 20's:right now that seems to mean Facebook (or MySpace if we want to go downmarket).

So I made a team account for the Grays, and then a group, because the team functionality seemed a bit limited. But then I discovered there is already a "The Providence Grays" group with 80 members. I was a bit confused by this, since the Facebook concept of a "group" doesn't exactly map to the real world meaning. I mean, I guess the current group is just people who think the historical Providence Grays were cool and an interesting reference to act as a facet of their online persona. I'm not sure how much this represents an actual little social network. Regardless, I've now found quite a few local young males who have some interest in the historical team, so my thought that this would be a good place to get the word out that we're looking for players seems to have been the right one.

1 comment:

JuneA said...

Hi Tom, I was interested in this sentence of yours, "I'm not sure how much this represents an actual little social network."

The facebook group actually does represent a social network because each individual is connected (and communicates) with each other via their shared link in the group.

You might be talking about whether the facebook group is a strong network (one where people actually, physicaly, or closely know each other) or a weak network (where people are connected but have far less closer relationships)... but it is a social network nevertheless.

Congrats on finding some new blood for the Grays!