Cordite & Facebook - Huh?

In the middle of last year we reported on our decision to start a Cordite group on Facebook:

However the biggest news of all is that, having surveyed the web’s range of social connection tools, Cordite has taken the unprecedented step of joining Facebook! If you’re a member, simply click on the link to be transported to the dead-basic Friends of Cordite portal.

Of course, this whole Facebook thingo might be over in a matter of seconds, but who wants to be the only one who wasn’t there when it WAS happening?

Huh?

Well, nine months later, we’ve amassed a grand total of 46 group members, 6 wall posts and 6 responses to two discussion topics. Which begs the question: who cares? Naturally, Facebook has not yet gone belly-up but, given the rate at which social networking sites rise and fall, some kind of crash is, essentially, inevitable.

This is not to say that there’s no place for poetry on Facebook - there are, of course a number of groups you can join with poetry as their focus. The proble, as we see it, is in the kinds of interaction the Facebook site and others like it encourage. No longer are we in the (perhaps) primeval stage of the Internet where interactivity means posting a smart comment or signing up for an email list. Now, it’s about networks of people, groups of friends and like-minded individuals posting links, photos, videos, in-jokes and … ummm … hatching eggs in more-or-less semi-private settings.

Clearly, we expect more from our screen culture than we used to. So where does this leave a journal like Cordite, whose emphasis has always been on text and the written word? Perhaps this is a question we can’t answer very easily. Your comments, as always, are welcome …