SA niche alternative to Twitter
Microblogging platforms such as Twitter and FriendFeed are becoming increasingly popular with Internet users but unless you’re selective it’s easy to become overwhelmed by irrelevant content. Enter FLOSS.pro, a Laconica-based microblogging service for free software professionals, spearheaded by South African free and open source advocates.
Karl Fischer, one of the key drivers behind the project, describes FLOSS.pro as a microblogging site for free and open source professionals.
He says that the idea is to give software developers and organisations access to an open platform that is relevant to their work and daily lives. "FLOSS.pro exists purely that people can get more exposure for themselves as a FLOSS professionals and for the projects that they work on. It gives developers direct access to his or her users and helps them to quickly answer questions regarding the project.
"Imagine I’m looking for info on MySQL. I can quickly fire off a question: ‘Hi I need to setup !mysql securely any ideas how, can you point me to a good resource?’. That was 86 characters to ask a question. Another example: ‘!jobs My company is a looking for a !php developer, interested?’."
Think of FLOSS.pro as a hybrid platform; like a cross between a Linux user group email list and an all-comers service such as Twitter.
The FLOSS.pro service is based on the freely-available Laconica software which was originally developed because of Twitter instabilities and because many users wanted to use a free and open platform to do microblogging.
"I would like companies to embrace FLOSS.pro as another way of getting info to their users and people that are interested in their projects," says Fischer. "I would like to see developers and people involved in FLOSS to get better jobs and more experience. This is community. People these days think that social networking is a new thing which is not entirely true. People in free and open source communities have always used the Internet to communicate and to create great software."
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