Technology is a factor for me with this list because the messages come to my phone. While this is great because I can now see bird alerts more quickly, the downside is using this itty bitty keyboard, so I tend not to respond much. I know I can see these messages on my computer but to do so I need to log on to gmail, but this is not my primary email account so I don't do that every day. I also don't see my own posts so I feel a bit disconnected here, but I am glad this list exists.
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-----Original message-----
From: Bill Hubick <bill_hubick...>
To: MDBirds <mdbirding...>
Sent: Fri, Aug 10, 2012 10:40:21 GMT+00:00
Subject: [MDBirding] Thoughts on Facebook and Twitter
Hey Everyone,
There's no doubt about it, new technology is having major effects on birding. With digital photography, portable audio playback, smart phone apps, instant rarity alerts to tell you where to go, and much more, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. The most important thing to remember is that we don't have to play with all of them. While audio playback and eBird alerts are powerful tools, I have very mixed feelings about their effect on my birding. I use them sparingly because I don't like some of the nuances. Digital photography, on the other hand - I'm all in there, of course. The same should be true of all the communication technology. I think the list-serve is well-known and near and dear to our hearts. It's not going anywhere, and I still think it's the ideal medium for sharing the sort of information we're used to here and on MDOsprey. Facebook lends itself to more frequent, casual comments such as "Hey, where is Swan Creek?" (with 15 comments like "Swan
Creek is awesome!") and discussion of common IDs. I for one prefer to have a list-serve with highly diverse content, but with some structure and minimum bar for posting. Many people have recently lamented the lack of more diverse posts on this list-serve, but dozens of photos of common birds and two line posts about being excited to see common species X would seem out of place here, especially if there were 50 such posts (including one-line comments) a day. Many would like it, but I dare say
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