Depending on what you mean by ‘format’, you might be able to direct those people to the specific articles you think they’d benefit from, or even pick out particular snippets to talk to them about (in a ‘hey, isn’t this a neat thing’ sense, not a ‘you should learn this’ sense).
“Pick out particular snippets” seems to work quite well. If something in the topic of conversation tags, in my mind, to something I read on LessWrong, I usually bring it up and add it to the conversation, and my friends usually find it neat. But except with a few select people (and I know exactly who they are) posting an article on their facebook wall and writing “this is really cool!” doesn’t lead to the article actually being read. Or at least they don’t tell me about reading it.
If facebook is like twitter in that regard, I mostly wouldn’t expect you to get feedback about an article having been read—but I’d also not expect an especially high probability that the intended person actually read it, either. What I meant was more along the lines of emailing/IMing them individually with the relevant link. (Obviously this doesn’t work too well if you know a whole lot of people who you think should read a particular article. I can’t advise about that situation—my social circle is too small for me to run into it.)
It wasn’t actually on account of this discussion that I introduced my friend to LW (since I didn’t read Swimmer and Adelene’s comments till afterward)- I just posted the reaction here because it was funny and relevant.
I don’t know what Twitter is like, but the function on Facebook that I prefer to use (private messages) is almost like email and seems to be replacing email among much of my social circle. I will preferentially send my friends FB messages instead of emails, since I usually get a reply faster.
Writing on someone’s wall is public, and might result in a slower reply because it seems less urgent. But it’s still directed at a particular person, and it would be considered rude not to reply at all. But when I post an article or link, the reply I often get is “thanks, looks neat, I’ll read that later.”
Depending on what you mean by ‘format’, you might be able to direct those people to the specific articles you think they’d benefit from, or even pick out particular snippets to talk to them about (in a ‘hey, isn’t this a neat thing’ sense, not a ‘you should learn this’ sense).
“Pick out particular snippets” seems to work quite well. If something in the topic of conversation tags, in my mind, to something I read on LessWrong, I usually bring it up and add it to the conversation, and my friends usually find it neat. But except with a few select people (and I know exactly who they are) posting an article on their facebook wall and writing “this is really cool!” doesn’t lead to the article actually being read. Or at least they don’t tell me about reading it.
If facebook is like twitter in that regard, I mostly wouldn’t expect you to get feedback about an article having been read—but I’d also not expect an especially high probability that the intended person actually read it, either. What I meant was more along the lines of emailing/IMing them individually with the relevant link. (Obviously this doesn’t work too well if you know a whole lot of people who you think should read a particular article. I can’t advise about that situation—my social circle is too small for me to run into it.)
I, uh, just did that, and received this reply half an hour later:
I think that counts as a success.
Upvotes to you for trying something instead of defaulting to doing nothing.
It wasn’t actually on account of this discussion that I introduced my friend to LW (since I didn’t read Swimmer and Adelene’s comments till afterward)- I just posted the reaction here because it was funny and relevant.
Sorry for the delayed reply...
I don’t know what Twitter is like, but the function on Facebook that I prefer to use (private messages) is almost like email and seems to be replacing email among much of my social circle. I will preferentially send my friends FB messages instead of emails, since I usually get a reply faster.
Writing on someone’s wall is public, and might result in a slower reply because it seems less urgent. But it’s still directed at a particular person, and it would be considered rude not to reply at all. But when I post an article or link, the reply I often get is “thanks, looks neat, I’ll read that later.”