Long post, so watch out. Glad we are having this discussion - I was going to start in December but earlier the better.
Sorry if I came across promoting that page. To call out - There is no doubt in my mind where my roots are from (Jays notes -> Sports India). There is a reason why i used the word 'Window' and not a house or replacement or something absurd like that. A fb page cannot be a replacement to a discussion forum - that platform doesn't allow for continuity of discussion. If that page had a fb community added, then yes, it is a conflict. And additionally, I joined that page only about 3 months ago and would gladly exit if it is seen as a conflict - SI matters to me more (same for Jaydeep and likely Vatsal). Just to ensure Jaydeep is not seen from the same light - he is only there to mentor/bring structure in our discussions - We noticed the page was growing way faster and fortunately/unfortunately - players started following that page. I specifically pushed Vatsal to request Jaydeep for the above - Jaydeep is not active in terms of content there - more as a mentor. So hopefully we won't see Jaydeep in the same angle for this discussion.
I wouldn't discuss on that page myself. Just like prasen said, facebook for me is for a whole lot of something else and given the privacy settings it offers, I wouldn't want all my tennis discussions to show up to my friends / family / co workers / even my managers! Tennis is a more of a personal passion and I would prefer to keep it that way. Additionally, Social media is brittle in terms of its future - facebook as a platform itself is dying for young people - its moving to Instagram -> Snapchat.
Now my motive to make it clear - as I myself would doubt my motive from a 3rd person view given that I have only been a consumer of content but not contributor on this forum -
1. To spread the journey of Indian players beyond the core group of tennis followers (who are not on SI)
2. To spread (1), amongst the younger generation of tennis enthusiasts [Kids are starting on mobile, have lesser attention span. There is a reason why large Corps have moved towards mobile-first world]. If we look at the demographics of our forum - we will understand what I am talking about.
3. As our players participate in events across the various tournaments abroad, wanted a mechanism where the local indian community pages / groups in those countries atleast are aware of our player presence and try to get alteast 3-5 people to cheer for them and publish in their local dailies
[Example: When Ram plays in San Francisco, ensure atleast it gets posted in the social media page of indian tennis player community of san francisco. So reaching out to admins of those fb communities, to post about it there by referencing the ITD post for more info]
4. There are few more I had but can't recollect as of now
Learning so far
1. The audience is way different than I/we had imagined it to be. Lot of the Jr / non-top-3 players are following the page. I noticed the same group tends to follow Kamesh's fb page. So unfortunately, not my/our intention, but if at all one has to call it a competition, its turning out to be competing with Kamesh's page (note: not our forum as the audience is different]
2. There are way more core Indian tennis followers outside of our forum than I had imagined.
Example
I have noticed pings from random places like Jeddah / remote parts of india / manila / etc. to post result of a Leander match or Mukund Sasikumar's match that they have stayed awake and seen at like 2 am their time. In the 3-5 conversations i managed to start with these young people, inspite of telling them about sports-india, they are stuck with showing me the Android / iOS Apps they use to follow Indian Tennis in Junior/future events. This clearly tells me that desktop/forum doesn't come to them as naturally
3. Most of the followers of the page are in the 15-25 yr bucket apart from large section of player parents/coaches
4. There is a huge audience out there (atleast >50k) for Indian Tennis content that this forum generates.
5. It is much easier on a social platform to connect with tournament organizers / players. The players/events have to maintain a presence anyway for their marketing needs.
For example - when I share an update on Nandini Sharma or a Kanika Vaidya from their Portugal / French academies - because those pages get notified, I realize the founder / player themselves start following the page for updates and message us occasionally. Now these are some aspects that we just can't replicate here.
Now my plan was also to check for the following
1. As mentioned before, I have only been a consumer of content but not contributor. So volunteered with vatsal to see if I even do it for atleast 3 months in a structured manner
2. To gain an experience of what it was even like
If above (2) checked out still by end of year, I had mentioned to both Jaydeep / Vatsal in chat, that I/we will start a discussion with Jay (or in this forum as a topic) to see if he would even be open to entertain the topic of social media page/window of our SI forum (note - not a replacement but more as a mechanism for younger generation to get indian tennis news). As Rajiv mentioned, this is bit of plagarism right now, so atleast when I see content which is not there on our forum yet, I do post it here while posting there. Note: I (and i think Vatsal / Jaydeep too) wouldn't have an issue of shutting down that page or rebranding the page if we agree for an SI Tennis Social Media outlet - we all have the same passion / interest
Incase a new topic is not started by my evening time, I will do in the misc section of this forum as I am passionate about this topic. Its just that I wanted to start topic after doing it for few months (to feel confident myself) but given that we have this discussion now, it is indeed the right time!
But I wanted to ensure this part about ITD is done with so that we can focus on the merits/demerits of social media presence of SI (Tennis section, other sports might be too broad a scope) and if there is consensus, we can focus on the next steps there.