Newsfeed vs Forum · Skool Community

Newsfeed vs Forum

I was replying to a comment in WeTube... and I put so much effort into it, I thought I would post it here in Skool and expand on it.

For context... I have two Skool groups and will likely have a 3rd before the end of the year. So - I like the product. It's unique. But - I think it would be more helpful for LEARNING if we IMPROVED the Newsfeed.

I think that a "Newsfeed" style of community isn't nearly as effective as a "forum" style.

Just hear me out... and DEFINITELY read the case study below. It's eye opening.

FORUMS

Forums allow for massive sub-categorization of topics. You can go into a sub-forum (like "sales" or "launches" or "Course creation") and just go through pages and pages of threads on that topic... and very quickly scan titles and find threads that are useful.

This can be done so easily and quickly. Great threads keep coming to the top of that SUB-CATEGORY in the forum, as people continue to add to it days, weeks, or even YEARS later.

Forums also tend to be more compact... you can see more threads on a screen in a shorter amount of time. It's more efficient. The DESIGN of the forum encourages better thread titles.

NEWSFEED

Whereas Newfeed style... There's a massive and lopsided RECENCY bias. Great threads get buried... and - honestly - great threads never even get CREATED because people know that it's going to get lost within a few days.

Why bother? Why take the time to contribute something meaningful when there's NO GUARANTEE that it will be found by the search function? What if someone doesn't type in a phrase that would bring that to the top?

The "Newsfeed" was a massive step backwards for digital learning. Another way that Facebook and Twitter screwed us.

Obviously, I know the Feed is a core function of Skool... but if there was a way to SOLVE this problem, then you could have the best of both worlds. (I'll get to that below).

Also - I know that Skool has a FILTER function... but the lack of more robust categories means that a lot of posts get jumbled together in giant "catch-all" categories. And - it encourages frothy, more "social" type posts than posts where people go deep. (also more on that in the case study)

****** CASE STUDY *****

I was part of a community years ago that had a forum. I created a post that went into detail on my first ever course launch in 2015. It was MASSIVE. Almost 4000 words long. I posted it in the section on launches. Was able to use SEVERAL popular community-generated tags to tag it for "searchability" in the tag cloud on the forum.

That post delivered tons and tons of value to people in the community, I shared lots of things that I learned and takeaways. Even TWO years later... that post continued to get comments, questions, "stars" (their version of a like), and replies. People would reply and tell me how things that I had said influenced them and helped them improve their business. I continued to engage people over time until I left that community. I'm sure it continued to help people even after I was gone!!!!!

And - because people kept replying to it... it kept coming to the top of that sub-forum and even was featured as a popular thread in the "popular threads of the month" section... even years later!

On the other hand...

In WeTube, I created a massively valuable post about hiring for your team. Very long, very valuable, really practical. Shared proprietary systems and information that we created in our business. Took me about 30 - 45 minutes to create and write.

Guess what? It gets ZERO engagement just six weeks later.

BURIED. In the feed. No way for someone to find it. No one WOULD find it, because there is no category and even though it was a HUGELY popular post when it was first posted... there's no way for that to help it to continue to "rise to the top" over time.

That seriously decreased my motivation to spend that amount of time to help the community. And, I know I can't be alone.

And - that leads to what Newsfeed based communities then tend to devolve to... tons of frothy, social-type posts.

Here's the punchline... remember that forum I talked about at the beginning of this case study? You might remember I said that I left that community in 2017.

The reason I left it was they abandoned their forum for a much "cooler" and "modern" newsfeed style (that's what the business owners said).They archived the forum... so my post still remained. But, the community switched to a Newsfeed, and within a few months the posts became so meaningless that I quit the community. They literally changed the character of the place in just a few short months because of this MASSIVE design changed.

I really mourned the change, because I had been a member since 2014... and had gotten TONS of value from that community. Then they switched the software, and whereas I got tons of value before... the place became just another quasi-Facebook.

It was eye-opening for me... and served as a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of design. A very REAL example.

SOLUTIONS?

What are the solutions then? Here are just a few that I came up with... I'm sure we could crowdsource even more:

Allow there to be USER generated tags or categories
Encourage Skool group owners to create more tags and categories somehow
Allow a "compact view" where you can see more threads on the screen at once
Create a sidebar item that shows all of the user tags or categories and people can click it and it only brings up things in that tag (so, alllllllmost functioning like a forum at that point)
Create a view that shows the most popular POSTS of the last week, month, year, and all-time... far more helpful for LEARNING than seeing which users got the most points in the last 7 days or 30 days
???? Leave an idea in the comments ???? Perhaps the team will read this and brainstorm?

That's all. :)

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