Monday, November 02, 2009

What's Your Favorite Yahoo Group?

I don't know about you, but I have belonged to a whole mess of Yahoo Groups at one time or another. In fact, I confess that I currently am subscribed to over 100 groups. Many are writing/reading/publishing-related, naturally, but I'm also part of numerous gardening, regional, spiritual, and homeschooling groups as well. Do I have time to read these? Nope. Many are just places to promo, places I joined because my publishers have arranged author chats there, or places I no longer have the interest to follow.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and wanting to streamline my chat groups. I'll admit, I look at them and just cannot decide which groups I really want to sit and "chat" on, especially when it comes to author groups. While many of these have active memberships, a whole lot of others are little more than drive-by promotional stops (and I'm guilty of this as much as the rest).

What I want to know is, what is YOUR favorite recommended Yahoo Group for good, friendly, old-fashioned CHATTER? That place where Everybody Knows Your Name, Where can you put up your feet with a cuppa joe to laugh and learn with fellow authors (or readers)? Inquiring minds want to know. I may hear some groups I'm already on, and just need to focus more attention there. Others may be new to me, but deserve a shout out for everyone to see. So dig out those bookmarks and share the wealth!

A few I like for chat:

Amethst Winters and Company --a fun group for chat, also nice hosts for author chats!

Marketing for Romance Writers --Not for general chat, but a good spot to get info on author promotion--without having to sift through any author promos

Romance Junkies Readers --Nice and fun for general chat, and they host a lot of publisher/author chats where they will try to jump in and comment while the authors are "live."

4 comments:

Courtney Mroch said...

I belong to some, but dropped a TON of the ones I had. I just couldn't keep up. A person can only social network so much of the day... (And now that I've found Twitter, forget about it! ;)

Lisa Logan said...

Yeah, exactly where I'm at right now. I'm really seeking the best of the best "chat" groups. I might hold a contest so people can give their faves a shout-out!

Helen Ginger said...

I belong to four, and even that is too much. I'm not sure how you do 100, even in digest form. Only one of mine is in digest form and it's not very active. I tend to read the subject line and usually can tell from that whether to even open the email or delete. I delete much more than I open.

Helen
Straight From Hel

Lisa Logan said...

Pretty much how I do it, too, though many groups I don't take digest, but web only/special notices. I delete many digests unread at this point, some days reading a few, others none. Hence why it's time to say sayonara to a lot of them.