Social media outreach, via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc., is an important part of outreach to users. Although the Apache developer community is firmly rooted in mailing lists, we know that our users live in a different world. If we want to engage with them we need to use the tools that they use, and communicate the way they communicate.
Now that we're very close to the AOO 3.4 release, I'd like to start with a project Twitter account, under PPMC control. By "under PPMC control" I mean something similar to how we treat the project blog: -- Any PPMC member, upon request, can have write access. -- We can use the project's official logo in conjunction with the account. -- We would promote the account on our project's website. -- We would generally treat the account as an official voice of the project, not as a personal account. I'm not saying we need to pre-review and and approve every "tweet" sent through the account. But we should set expectations that the account is to be used in a professional fashion, upholding the standards of this project, not used to settle personal disputes, to promote personal business, etc. There are already several Twitter accounts that use the OOo name or trademarks: http://twitter.com/#!/openofficeorg --- This account has 1571 followers. But it is not sharing any AOO status, no links to blog posts, announcements, etc. Who controls it? Are we able to get it under PPMC control? Can we rebrand it as Apache OpenOffice? http://twitter.com/#!/openoffice -- This account seems unused. Only one tweet. http://twitter.com/#!/freeopenoffice -- spammer account. Links to http://www.downloadopenofficefree.com/. http://twitter.com/#!/ApacheOO -- I created this account, though have never used it. Unfortunately, "Apache OpenOffice" is too long for a Twitter account name. So "ApacheOO" is the closest I got. I would offer this account to the PPMC if we are not able to get use of the http://twitter.com/#!/openofficeorg account. Proposed actions: 1) I'll send note (or Tweet) to http://twitter.com/#!/openofficeorg acccount, asking if the owner would be willing to make the account available to the AOO PPMC for project use. If we get a favorable response then we would start using that account, rebrand it, promote it, etc. 2) If there is no favorable response to the above, then we would go forward with promoting the http://twitter.com/#!/ApacheOO account. 3) The PPMC could decide, at a later point, to invoke Twitter's trademark policy to register complaints about accounts that misuse our trademarks in ways that harm our users: https://support.twitter.com/articles/18367. But I don't see an imminent need for that. -Rob
