Social networking for a middle-aged beginner?

June 21, 2009 3:31 AM

I have a friend who is reasonably familiar with the commercial and news side of the web but is interested in using it for online social activities - I set her up on Facebook yesterday but I think what she's really looking for is a forum-based community where she can chat or discuss things with people in the evening after she has put the children to bed and she's on her own. Any suggestions?

She has a husband so she's not looking for that sort of company, but he tends to go to bed long before she wants to as he is considerably older than her. She's in her late forties, works long hours at a stressful job and has two young boys who are fairly demanding, and wants to unwind at the end of the day with a glass of wine and some intelligent conversation. She has a PhD on a particular Victorian author, but when I showed her the Facebook communities related to her subject she wasn't impressed. I tend to drift around dipping in and out of blogs, and use LiveJournal quite a lot, but I think she's looking for something a little more focussed to dip her toe in the water, somewhere where she's going to find people of a similar age and educational background with similar interests (travel, art, literature).

posted by nja to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Not to state the obvious but have you suggested Metafilter? Apart from that she could try BookCrossing. The art boards on Craftster attract a really wide range of ages, and it's an incredibly friendly and supportive community.
posted by teraspawn at 4:01 AM on June 21 [1 favorite]

Obvious is a dangerous word. teraspawn has it right. The answer to this AskMe is right in front of you.
posted by evil_esto at 5:48 AM on June 21

OK, I'm back again. www.aldaily.com is not really social but a good place for reading and links, links, links.

Now I'm gone!
posted by evil_esto at 5:50 AM on June 21

Listservs would be her best bet at that level.

These email list servers (most have web forums too) are the hidden underbelly of internet discussion. They host email discussions for very specific fields or subfields. They are usually very high-level (populated by the who's-who of field A, B or C) and can have significant daily volume. It's not at all uncommon to find top scholars of field x on list x.

Opera-L is the uber-listserv for opera, for example.

The City University of New York (CUNY) has tons of them and was the original host of Opera-L.

If she knows which university has a concentration of (Victorian authors, etc.), then try to find their listservs.

A quick Google search for "listserv victorian authors" found The Electronic Conference of Victorian Studies listserv.

Subscription instructions are on the page for the general list.

More specific listservs and blogs are further down on the page, such as the following:

AUSTEN-L (Jane Austen)
C18-L (18th-century studies)
DICKNS-L (Charles Dickens)
ELCS-L (English Literature, Culture & Society, 1880-1920)
H-ALBION (British history)
H-WOMEN (Women's History)
NASSR-L (North American Society for the Study of Romanticism)
etc.

I'm personally not impressed with Google Groups or Yahoo Groups, but both have more focused groups and group discussion (i.e. Authors interested in Anthony Burgess, etc.).

She shouldn't be immediately put off by the size of a group. A group may have just 10 members. She won't know if they're the top 10 scholars in their field until she lurks for a while.

There's always Yahoo! Answers too, but that's like the kiddie version of AskMe.

If she can't find a group, she can always create and manage one herself (easy on Google/Yahoo Groups), even if she sounds a tad busy for that.
posted by foooooogasm at 7:02 AM on June 21

Metachat.org is very friendly. I've found congenial groups of people on websites with very specific interests. I recommend she follow her interests, keeping in mind that on any given day, a site might not have fabulous content. MeFi is, of course, my favorite timesink.
posted by theora55 at 12:46 PM on June 21

Is she interested in fibre craft (knitting, crochet, spinning, weaving)? The forums at Ravelry have many groups that cater to various (non-fibre related) interests. There is a lot of intelligent, thoughtful discussion there. Off the top of my head I would suggest the Ivory Tower Fibre Freaks group, or The Victorians, or, if she wants to debate current events/controversial topics, Big Issues Debate.

You have to sign up for an account and it takes a day or two for memberships to be processed, but it is well worth the very short wait.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 4:25 PM on June 21

She may like the folk on TheSimplest.com, many of whom are similar in age, interests and situation. It's the new incarnation of the net oldie 'Three Way Action' or 3WA as it was later known. Many of the posters have been around for years but the place is very welcoming of newcomers. The forum has threads on many different topics - books, cooking, crafts, politics, work, family, relationships, etc and the standard of conversation is high.
posted by Kerasia at 7:49 PM on June 23