I still track the comp.lang.smalltalk group on USENET, but I follow it via the RSS feed pushed out by Google. I almost never post original material there anymore; the heyday of USENET came and went years ago. Why bring this up now? Well, I ran across this on cls a few minutes ago:

James Robertson said they use social networking sites, something I disagree with because it makes it more difficult to look for specific problems and solutions.

To which I responded:

I still monitor comp.lang.smalltalk, it's just not the place I go to post news myself. For that I have my blog, which gets more traffic than this group, and gets noticed by non-Smalltalkers - something that simply isn't the case for a group like this.

I also echo everything from my blog out to a Twitter feed (@jarober), and a subset to the @cincomsmalltalk Twitter feed. Additionally, we use resources that simply cannot be handled here on Usenet: Video uploads to our site and various social networking sites (Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, Ning), and the audio podcast (our site, mevio, Facebook, Ning).

All of the video and audio is available via the iTunes store as well (free, in the podcast section). These are things that usenet is simply unsuited for. And for general announcements and news? As I said above, I can reach beyond the core Smalltalk audience by using the broader net.

Which pretty much describes the state of play right now. The cls newsgroup had its day in the sun; that day is past. Things are different now, and in order to reach today's audience, I simply can't act as if it's still 1994.

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