ESRI Moves Their UC Blog to Facebook
As I said on Twitter, this is probably a good move for ESRI and building a community around the User Conference. Facebook is a closed ecosystem (you have to sign up to participate) but given Facebook’s traction online, it is the right move. So if you want to keep up on the ESRI UC news, sign up for Facebook and join the Official ESRI UC group.
The ESRI Crowd Rolls on Facebook
Update: As some have pointed out on Twitter, not every company allows access to Facebook so the community might be missing key people.
I remember the days before ESRI had a website — they had a Compuserve forum. Then they abandoned the CS forum for the open web. 1o- (15?) years later, have we come full circle?
Linked In might be a better choice.
Facebook is for stuff you don’t want your mother to see, let alone your boss……
LinkedIn is too stodgy. MySpace is for (expletive) cretins (quote from Rupert Murdoch’s biographer). Facebook is the place to be.
Not only do “some” companies not allow access to Facebook: ESRI doesn’t internally allow access to Facebook.
Now that’s kind of funny.
I guess people use facebook however they want, but personally i see it as a tool for friends and not a business tool to keep in touch with colleagues. Ive seen a number of my friends with their profile photos wearing a tie and a big “hi there” smile.
Im not saying its a bad move by ESRI I just dont think its the perfect tool to be getting the message across.
really stupid to put this on facebook and not LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a much more professionally facing portal. I don’t want to read about how many “pokes” someone has got while looking at their facebook postings in an ESRI forum. And add my company to the list that blocks facebook, but we DON’T block LinkedIn, again because it is a professional site.
I think it’s a smart move to branch out into different forums. There are several ad-hoc groups for GIS users on Facebook, but they are mostly meaningless because there’s no direction or contribution. I think this could help ESRI get information out there and drum up interest in their brand of GIS.
The problem is that I can’t get to Facebook from work – it’s blocked by web filters. I had to ask for blogs.esri.com to be unblocked by the filter. Anything that they post that would benefit me at work I won’t see until after I head home.
Not to get too far off topic, but this web filtering nonsense is getting out of hand. I work in state government and many of our state websites use .com instead of .nj.us and most of these sites were blocked.
Just a quick note on access.
We recognize that some folks do not have access to Facebook “during the dayâ€, but don’t forget, we’ve published the RSS feeds on the FB page as well. This way, as long as you can access your RSS reader, you’ll be able to catch the latest buzz in the FB world.
Official Dev Summit FB Page
EDN Team FB Page
It’s not perfect, but it might help you stay connected.
EDN Team
1) Facebook is the new Google, get it already.
2) I am reminded of the early days of the internets when most people did not have internet access at work at all — only at home. The early internet applications were considered a toy before they became a business tool. Much like Facebook today.
Um… I remember this past year in Redlands that I couldn’t access Facebook from ESRI’s Redlands campus.
I have noticed that their is a ESRI network on Facebook.
that should be there not their in my last post.
Hmmmm:
“F*ck you, ArcMap!” Group on Facebook: 1,518 members (including me
“Official ESRI UC 2008″ Group: 594 members !
Way to go ESRI!
@Petz
I wonder how many of ESRI’s staff are members of the former.
@John Reiser: A true scientist would have to adjust the former number for Facebook users who, for contractual and other obvious reasons, could only join the former group in spirit. There go ESRI employees, business partners, etc. Thus the “real” former number is significantly higher.
This just goes to show why there needs to be a service that allows you to control your multiple public personas , like a mix of Facebook and LinkIn.
I hate having to manage multiple accounts but also don’t want my boss, co-workers, or prospective employers seeing the photos from my bachelor party or family vacations.
Love it, it went well before last years conference. Would make sense to have an official LinkedIn as well, and not the current group by ESRI ex employees (ESRI Family). Doesn’t anybody go online from home, it seems that yeah, we can’t access from work, but then we can from home. No worries. Better to have something than nothing. Thank you Allan.
It’s a great idea for ESRI to take advantage of the social networking sites to expand their exposure but I don’t understand why they would drop their own blog in the process.
They also started putting some of their videos on youtube.
That’s really great since that site is blocked at work along with facebook.
Good thinking there.