Facebook vs. Wordpress wrt Google

March 2020

One of the more pleasing aspects of using Wordpress for the "gateway" pages for the Village Hall is that it seems to be more readily indexed by Google than an equivalent Facebook page. Searching for coronavirus and the village name or even the support group returns the Village Hall. The Support Group does not feature in the SERP, possibly due to the fact that it is a Private Group.

Coronovirus - Covid-19

I can safely make an observation here that I can be pretty certain will not be seen by those that I am critical. There is no way that those that thought that they had a viable solution to the Covid-19 crisis are going to find these pages. The people to which I refer are too caught up in their "Facebook" exisitances to either be interested or to look for what I think about what happened.

The observation revolves around the efforts to provide an "assistance network" for the local community. This involved the Village Hall and the Parish Council, for which I am the webmaster. Facebook was presented in a "fait accompli" solution - quite frankly I was appalled at what transpired. The initiative was taken by the Parish Council but was co-opted by Facebook users who suggested that a Group existed already and all we needed to do was to "piggy-back" onto that groups initative.

As I have also observered the crisis that was created by Coronavirus has worked out well for Facebook. This is interesting as it is not a consequence of any initiative by Zuckerberg, it was rather the users that thought that "the power of Facebook" was something that could bring a community together. I have an alternative take on this in that it may work it you are a Facebook user and judging on the general level of posting on Facebook it would in effect trivialise the endevour. In my opinion this is excatly what happend.

Those that think Facebook is a good thing

It has become apparent to me that popularity of Facebook is that it an easy way of people who already have relationships to communicate with like-minded users of the network. This is particularly demonstrated by religious groups, clergy and followers are by definition "like-minded" and in the absense of an effective method to pass information between themselves in a manner where minimal effort is required to receive updates by the pure act of posession of a mobile phone and logging on to a Social Media platform.

I am not saying this is bad thing. Just that it is not for me. I believe that the effect/outcome is to reduce the communication to the lowest common denominator.

When I joined the Coronavirus Support Group I created a profile in my own name. I had not done this before but I thought that it would lead to less confusion from the other group members as it was local and some of the other members know who I am. I also thought that it would help in getting my membership requset accepted. This proved to be a misconception as I have subsequently found that a membership request from anyone would be accepted. This was particularly interesting as I had suggested that the group be "Public" and was met with "push-back" on what I percieved were "security" concerns. I withdrew from the group and now even my old posts have been removed.

I know that my posts were there for a while as I apparently managed to "piss-off" a member of the group who definitely knows me and commented on my new Facebook page (not on the group) in a manner that I interpreted that she did not understand what I had posted and disagreed with my stance on the use of Facebook. I subsequently deleted the profile in my name as I did not want to get into a discussion with the person on Facebook.

I created another "false" profile and re-applied for membership and was accepted, this proved that any attempt at security was not even considered as I could have been anyone! Still, I can now see the posts on the support group.

Live broadcast of Church services on Facebook

What I don't understand is why parishioners are encouraged to join Facebook for the duration of Coronavirus crisis and then deleting it after the "emergency" has passed. Is there something "bad" about Facebook?