On 21 August 2010 12:12, Simon Ward
<address@hidden> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 10:59:58AM +0100, Jonathan Davis wrote:
[snip]
> I think an account would come in handy for people to be able to keep
> track of the meetings, special events such as Software Freedom Day,
> along with any other news or location changes.
Try !mcrfs on Identi.ca (which I thought you already had an account on).
I do have an account on Identi.ca, although as far as I know, "!mcrfs" is just an Identi.ca group which anybody can post messages to, as opposed so a single officially sanctioned news source, which is what most people look for with Twitter.
> This would also allow people to 'mention' and 'retweet' us to promote
> our activities more widely and effectively.
[snip]
If you must live in the Twitter world, with a Twitter bridge you can
have your Identi.ca updates automatically posted to Twitter. Some
clients also support posting to and reading both at once.
I'd be happy with this arrangement, if we could set-up a new MFS Indenti.ca account which automatically cross-posted to Twitter then I believe that would meet the needs of the many Twitter-only users. The account itself would only really be a pointer towards our website and mailing list.
> Most other local groups have a Twitter presence, for example;
> MadLab[1], Manchester GirlGeeks[2], BarCamp Manchester[3], Manchester
> WordPress User Group[4].
Just because all of the other groups do it… I should shear you and knit
myself a new jumper. ;)
Given the huge number of Twitter users (compared with Identi.ca) I still
feel it would be a good opportunity to spread our activities to people
who may never have heard of us. Especially to techie people who use Twitter but have never
heard of Identi.ca or GNU/Linux.
I do feel that further promoting the group on Identi.ca would be preaching to the converted somewhat.
> I'd be quite happy to run such an account on behalf of the group if
> required, but I thought I would ask for people's opinions on whether
> it would be useful or not?
Useful for some people maybe, but very much backwards, both in terms of
furthering free software and in technological advancement.
I certainly see your point, but there's always a danger of pushing the idea that we shouldn't promote
non-free software to it's limits and prevent people from finding out
about free software in the first place. I think most (if not all) of us first found
out about GNU/Linux and free software whilst making use of proprietary
software and services.
Jonathan