Facebook Group

So about a week ago I made a facebook event asking my St. Lawrence friends (not necessarily close friends, just people I am friends with on facebook in the SLU network) if they wanted to be interviewed for my documentary. The results so far...

6 people claim to be attending but only two of them actually posted on the wall of the event "verbally" showing commitment to participating. Out of the other four, I have spoken to one of them in person and she agreed to participate. The majority of the people who have said they are attending are people that I am friends with and spend a lot of time with, whether it's in class or in extracurricular activities.

8 people say to be "maybe" attending, clarification please? Maybe attending has always been an ambiguous term on facebook, and to be honest I usually click maybe attending when I feel bad rejecting the invitation and feel like the invite has been waiting for a response for a long enough time period. Out of the people who are "maybe" attending I haven't formally spoken to any of them.

10 people say they are not attending. Out of those who clicked no the majority of them I haven't spoken to in three years.

Here's the kicker...202 people are awaiting to reply. Some of these people are close friends who I have actually spoken to in person and mentioned to them that I need to interview people. Those that I have asked in conversation have said they would love to help, so why don't they confirm on facebook. You may be thinking, well they don't need to confirm since you spoke to them face-to-face but I actually spoke to all of them after I had created the group. Are they just ignoring my group? This has made me start to think about information overload. We get invited to so many events and groups on facebook that we stop actually looking at them. The same thing happens with email, I know I personally ignore a lot of emails because it just gets to be too much and then after a while that email gets lost among all the other emails I have.

So is this form of communicating to people about the idea of my project good or bad? Am I just being lazy by creating this group, because so far based on the results I am thinking I am going to need to take another approach to attract people to my project. Right now I'm thinking those that have verbally agreed will receive an email asking them to respond with a day and time that works well for them to start filming. Is email more personal then facebook? We will see.