Social media and Lego

[nerdsforprez]

Kinda hard for me to decide where the share this. I primarily work with Technic for building MOCs, but occasionally I build with system bricks so I will take a more general approach and post it here.

I won't post too many details here.... because I have already done a full write-up about the topic of discussion here: http://www.moc-pages.com/moc.php/422976

Essentially, many of us love to share our MOCs on social media sites. There are many. I use Mocpages. Love or hate it (and there are many reasons to hate it), that is what I use. Not going to discuss the pros and cons here. But, I think it is fun to examine the "liveliness of a MOC" by the views it gets through time. Not "likes" - but views. "likes" die off to nearly nothing over time, even for the most popular MOCs, and not even available on many sites (brickshelf, etc.). But views give us much to look at, even if a MOC is very old (posted a long time ago).

So, I examined my MOC submissions this way. I looked at the relationship between time and views for my mocs. Kinda fun, I recommend others do the same. I know there are many more sophisticated models and procedures to look at this relationship, but I focused on simplicity to maximize the availability of such an examination to many people. Fun to see what our most "lively" (aka... IMO best) builds are.....

Dang it.... just realized there is a specific area for "multimedia" and this section deals with primarily "media" as in video games. If there is an administrator that sees this post, feel free to move it to a more appropriate forum area.

[Oky]

I think this might belong in the community forum, but I'm not sure myself.

Yeah, Mocpages definitely has its flaws, which is why I never used it. I used to use Brickshelf, but that's more an outdated picture dumping ground than a social media site. I now use Flickr which is what most AFOLs use I believe. It's easy to use, very social, and if you have a pro account, you will also get the statistics you're looking for. I don't really use them as they don't interest me. I just look at the total number of views I get on each picture. It also has a "Favorite" button which most people seem to be using as a Like button, but I personally still use it as what it was intended to be - a way of bookmarking your absolute favorite pictures so you can easily find and look at them again in the future.

The only downside is the constantly changing user interface, but you get used to it. I can highly recommend switching to Flickr.

[dr_spock]

I use Brickshelf and Flickr too. Flickr has a wider audience reach. It is not just AFOLs on Flickr. It is kind of interesting getting non-AFOLs fav'ing your LEGO photography.

I don't have PRO account but you can still see basic activity reports of new followers, who is fav'ng and who is commenting on your photos (of your MOCs). I think most of the best builders are on Flickr.

I think another way you can get more views on your MOCs is to get noticed and blogged by one of the popular LEGO blogs. Since you do Technic and System, it might be worth an analysis of which is more popular with the viewing population.

[nerdsforprez]

Thanks for the comments. I am less concerned about boosting my views or likes as I am just a plain old interest into the social variables at play when posting Lego models. In addition, perhaps I will look into Flickr, although one downside is that, to my knowledge one cannot post videos and add tons of text. I don't just focus on pictures........ if you check out my mocpages you will see that each post is more like a story. I prefer to share MOCs this way, and read about MOCs this way from others. It is much more interesting to know how someone arrived at building a MOC than simply looking at pics of them IMO......

[xboxtravis7992]

Yeah MOCpages is still the strongest place to tell a story with a MOC. Brickshelf or Flickr can only do that if they are linked to a forum such as this.

Interesting about the life cycle of a MOC. One thing I have noticed about MOCpages is every post I put on there feels like a competition to get to "the front-page." Sometimes it's hard when I do a good MOC, post and share it to groups; only to see it overpaced in popularity by some KFOL's post(recent examples "The Insurgency" and "Any Bionicle story that the kid uses his bedroom as a stand-in for Mata-Nui"). Since that is frustrating, I have begun to post in multiple places. The guys on Eurobricks are very responsive towards MOC builds and can easily praise and add constructive criticism.

A lot of AFOLs post Everywhere; MOCpages. Brickshelf, Flickr, Eurobricks, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and BZpower. They gain publicity because they build something cool and put it in the spotlight.

One more comment about MOCpages. When I first joined it was obvious there was once a more closely knit group of AFOLs there, a " Virtual LUG" per-se. Now the only people still active there are the people who are still on to regulate the website. Furthermore the owner of MOCpages (Sean Kenney) us not a "hobbiest" like us; he uses it to promote his job. While I admire Sean since he is one of the few professional Lego builders who associates with the laymen-FOLs like us; the way he runs MOCpages shows that it is his side focus, since he is really busy doing other stuff (I.e. making money with Lego art).

Edited February 5, 2016 by xboxtravis7992

[dr_spock]

It is possible to post videos to Flickr. They can get very choppy playback for users with slower Internet connections. YouTube may be the better place for videos.