A bit more then a year ago, we discussed the topic social media on our list. We decided to create official channels on different social media. I jumped in to join the administrator team of the official Apache OpenOffice Fan page. Since then, the number of fans has increased a lot.

At the beginning, the Facebook fan page was not really promising. We were happy if we got eight to twelve new fans per day. This is not a lot for a project that has 50 million downloads per year. But our group started growing more and more. Now we have 40 new fans every single day, and we have about two users per day who post on our pinboard.

But it's not the number of fans that makes the Apache OpenOffice Fanpage so special. It's the activity of our fans we like so much. You know, as community members we are often a bit separated from the users. I mean, we don't see them...it's not like a band who, playing a concert, see their fans from the stage. Of course, we have download numbers, and we can assume that our product is widely used out there. But for real feedback we have to go to our social media.

We are surprised by the enthusiasm of the fan page community. Some of them are more then just fans. Sometimes we get really valuable feedback. And others have already asked how become a part of the community. For those who want more than just being a fan, I propose to join our dev mailing list. And for the rest we like to say a "big thank you Apache OpenOffice Fans!"

¶