When Twitter was still fairly young, we had an account there that would tweet out when new data collections appeared in the VO. Even back then, I was rather doubtful whether using a proprietary platform to disseminate open data is a good idea, but as long as the content was also available through standard protocols (RSS in this case), I thought it might be worth a try. Well: It never really took off, and after Twitter broke the whole thing a couple of times by incompatible API changes, I finally let it go ca. 2017.
Given to the recent mass exodus from the smouldering remains of Twitter into the open and standard Fediverse, I thought reviving our little missives there might actually be a worthwhile effort. Specifically, joining Mastodon – which speaks the ActivityPub protocol and hence is part of the Fediverse – has become really straightforward.
So, if the VO Fresh RSS Feed is not for you (perhaps because you do not have an RSS aggregator, which would be a shame), maybe following our new Mastodon account @gavo@botsin.space would be for you?
Followup (2024-11-21)
In late 2024, botsin.space shut down, and we moved our operations to @gavo@astrodon.social; so, please point your fediverse clients there.
Oh, and yes, I give you the previews the Mastodon web client produces for VizieR resources are not overly pretty yet (curse Javascript templating!), but then if I were you, I'd disable URL previews anyway; really, they are little more than a privacy annoyance.
This post also doubles as identity verification, so:
Visit Visit Our Mastodon Page.