List Published: Deaf Groups on Facebook
Sunday April 12, 2009
Just published, a new list of the largest deaf-related groups on Facebook. In putting this list together, I made the cutoff point approximately 500 members. I considered making the cutoff point 1,000 members, but the deaf community is a small community so 500 seemed like a fair cutoff. Let me know if you think the cutoff point should have been 1,000. This is a "living list" that will change over time, with input from About.com readers. As it says in the introduction, groups will be added and dropped, and some groups may move higher or lower in the list.
This list has been put together to help people who are new to the deaf community and/or new to Facebook. Enjoy.
Comments
Hola!
I don’t see any list or a link leading to it…
It’s not an exact lisiting, many are co-members of every other deaf group, it is how they operate,the same as deaf clubs really. I’d prefer a breakdown of remit of these groups. Social only ? Campaigning only ? Age make up ?etc. Although the list seems massive, I am not convinced it represents deaf culture or anything,or that it repsents any united front on access areas. Facebook is trivia personified, the domain of youth wanting social adventures, and all that entails which is fine. For ythe more serious minded who want campaigns stepped up, bums on seats at access meetings I am wondering how many of these ‘thousands’ actualy care or do anything about that. If the UK is anything to go by next to none. Are these heavily membered sites American or British ? who ? My money is on American. I noticed Brit action was visible by default as having little or no memberships and even less cohesion, let’s have reality checks now please.
MM,
Your comments as always are hilarious. Why don’t you go look yourself and do the research and do a blog on it? The point of Berke’s post was not “lookie how many deaf people!” but “see what deaf groups are available on facebook.” The fact that your immediate reaction was “I’m sure this doesn’t represent that many deaf people!” is telling.
500 is a fair cut off. Keep it that way!
well Joseph I did peruse the facebook sites listed and found them near all American. Perhaps this was to be expected coming from an American blog but… Just because a site is listed with X amount of members does not mean that X amount is regularly contributing, or even still members, the numbers are debatable. I’ve joined sites, didn’t want to get involved with them and stopped,no doubt the fact I did join and left it there contributes to the huge figures we see,but they are not real contributors,and really, you don’t know if they are deaf either, just because they say they are. Deaf.read gets hearing and professionals contributing often, they aren’t all deaf people.
An UK major deaf site here stated thousands of members too, so I joined and found it only had about 20 regular contributors out of 6,000, people log in to sites some stay a short while, some don’t bother or not want to stay etc… true figures are a lot smaller than you may think.
There are lies damn lies etc… I am not suggesting the figures quoted are made up ! I am suggesting this doesn’t show the true picture. I did say personally I hate social sites, I was always against facebook, because I thought it over trivial, then we got warnings, the site simply was not safe for deaf people. I took that advice, I don’t offer any links to it. Twitter, seems totally infantile.
It’s ageist too ! as an older deaf person, I find most facebook sites are 18-30. I don’t have much in common with it, I can recall youth ! and the last thing I would’ve wanted then was older people hanging around. Ditto you don’t want young people chipping in with silly buzz sayings and talking gibberish !
Again statisically, young people are not interested in forum-type sites, I am, it’s a ‘generation’ thing !