Facebook groups are so versatile, it seems nearly impossible to replace them.
What tools can we use?
- A wiki: a wiki is a platform where the members can make changes to the pages themselves, which is useful for teams working on knowledge bases. Wikipedia is the most widely-known example, but there are also smaller initiatives, such as Movilab on third places.
- A forum: forums seem to be a thing from the past century, but they remain very useful to host discussions around given topics (for exemple: the Forums du libre du Québec around libre digital culture).
- Nextcloud: Nextcloud is probably the most solid free and open alternative to Google’s Suite. With apps such as Talk or Spreed.ME, most of our collaboration needs will be fulfilled, but it requires hosting it on a server (website).
- Discord: primarily used by gamers online, Discord works for communities big and small, from a school group to an international gaming league (website).
- GroupMe: far from an independant initiative, GroupME is part of the Skype family, which belongs to Microsoft (website).
- Slack: one of the most widely used communications platforms across all kinds of organizations.
- Mattermost: one of the main alternatives to Slack, to be hosted on your own terms (website).
- Rocket.Chat: another libre and open-source multiplatform communication hub. It can be self-hosted, but the managed services are very affordable (website).