Most EF regulars know about The Local, and recently you've all see the bot posting the news stories.

But how many EF'ers know the actual real people behind the site?

Well, there's now a Twitter list where you can follow the journalists and sales staff.

» Staff at The Local - Twitter list

I suspect most EF'ers are not Twitter users, but still, the list is there and visible in case you want to bookmark it or whatever.

And if you are a Twitter user, this list provides you with a means to interact, to send in praise, criticism, suggestions, etc.

What makes you think so ?

ashishshah, I don't have any stats, just a general feeling.

Plus, there are various polls and threads about Twitter on EF. I know they're not necessarily very representative, but still: Twitter - I don't get it

Not necessarily.
But its your opinion, so fair enough.

I am a twitter user. I don't tweet a lot but I use it to stay in touch with tech stuff + other things that interest me.
The tweet, itself, is usually is a short description of the actual content which gives me a chance to decide whether I want to look at the full content or not.

To me, altleast, and I think some others, it makes a lot of sense following interests on twitter.

It would be much more useful to hear from the staff about their plans and developments for EF before they happen.

Even better still, enable some form of consultation/input from members as it is us who make the site what it is.

I like surprises!

But shoot the bot.

(And do something about that bloody annoying pop-up that opens a new window when we click the 'close' button, like some kind of advert for rabbit porn. Please!)

To be fair...

Would be nice though to have something like this here on EF.
For those who don't use twitter.

I am not a Twitter user.

this.

Overall, asking people to use a secondary media to follow things that happen on this one seems a little bit naive(i want to say disconnected with the spirit of EFer's). Some people will follow, but I think the most of us would like something implemented here. (even one of those twitter boxes on the main page seems more friendly than an actual subscription)


How many of "the local" staff know us and interact with us on the medium that we use.?

Forum is interactive enough, provided that you don't Bot news and instead use real people to communicate it to us.

I agree with DP, that we like more news and feedback on what is going on here in the forum where we actually get our news and information from people we "know".

And it's not like anti-admin or anything, but the bots and announcements and such currently strike me as some sort of "the gods coming down the olympus".. I really can't relate to that.

I am not the only one that doesn't do Twitter

Based on my experience of interacting with the staff - I thoroughly approve of the current level.

Does anyone use "TheLocal" ?

I use TheLol..cats...

You and me both huh?

To answer your question; hardly at all. The forum itself is far more informative and interesting.

That is sort of what I was getting at.
It's not some of our regulars creating articles; digesting information, writting papers and then telling us about them.

It's some unknown person that
a) works for thelocal
b) doesn't know us (I've already esablished he is unknown to members)
c) seems to want us to subscribe to their tweets to be a trending topic

I suspect that, call me an old cynic, but that its pay time for those of us that are enjoying free use of a forum to communicate , participate etc, and true to the business model, The Local is just the start of a commercial strategy to fish in the waters of an accumulated forum membership (albeit a free one) to harvest the returns that are needed by those that have invested in the first place.
We mustnt be naive to believe that this kind of forum service is really free, because the truth is that it cannot be.

"It's journalism, Jim, but not as we know it."

Quite honestly, if it was a choice (and I know it isn't) between irritating, intrusive pop-ups advertising a dreadful news service which doesn't deserve to be associated with something as wonderful as the English Forum and paying a yearly subsciption for the privilege of posting, I'd pay the subscription.

But that'll never happen, and the Powers That Be know very well that we'll keep coming back no matter what shite they throw at us, so I suppose I'll just have to learn to put up with it.

In the UK I used to go down to the local all the time... Here I tend to go the Viadukt instead