Some web/social media tweaks for 2011 observing

By DAN ROBINSON Editor/Photographer

Maintaining a web site and associated social media feeds is the proverbial catch-22 of trying to please as many as possible, while annoying as few as possible. This is an ever-changing excercise in trying to give information only to those who would like to receive it. I value my readers and social media followers, and I'm always open to any suggestions that will make this whole effort a better experience for you.

That said, I've made a few minor changes in organization and protocol for the 2011 storm season to hopefully improve toward that goal. The biggest is giving this site a main 'front door' page again, and moving the blog URL back to the /blog/ subdirectory. The new front page is designed to emphasize the most popular sections on the site for easier access. The feed URLs are all the same.

Social media: For updates, the Facebook and Twitter pages will be the most frequently updated of all of my feeds. On storm observation days, these will include notifications of when the live video stream is on the air, along with a few updates about how the expedition is progressing. These feeds will also update with new blog postings. I respect the privilege of having social media followers by not over-posting, so at most you'll see an update on these feeds no more than once every few days. The exception will be on an storm observation day, when I may post as many as 5 or 6 times throughout the day, depending on how significant the event is.

For the 100 or so observer friends who are on my personal Facebook: to avoid cross-posting, I am limiting weather/expeditions content on that feed to postings about only the major events/intercepts after the fact. In other words, if you choose not to follow the Facebook page or Twitter feed, you won't see the real-time content or notifications. If you'd like to receive updates on the live streaming and so forth, you might consider following the Twitter or Facebook page, most of which will not be cross-posted to my private FB feed for netiquette reasons. Again, I promise to not abuse the courtesy of a 'like' or 'follow' by not posting excessively on those feeds.

Traditional RSS/XML: For those that prefer XML/RSS, those feeds are unchanged: the blog feed for this blog, the chase feed for final 'polished' expedition reports, and the new photo feed for new digital imagery in the gallery.

Again, I appreciate your readership and look forward to a productive and fun storm season!