With support from the VCF Board I have created a new service for supporters of the Vintage Computer Federation: A VCF Mastodon instance. I have a direct invite to sign up below, or the public url if you just want to look around. I also have some Q&A words below that may help explain why we are doing this. Just go right to signup: https://social.vcfed.org/invite/QDJkojxi Take a look around: https://social.vcfed.org/public Why do we need this? Mastodon is a federated network of instances (servers) every person that wants to participate needs an account on an instance. Many instances have rules and themes around topics. I thought it would be interesting to have one centered around VCF, its supporters which acknowledges our charter and its goals. The Board agreed and we have created and then set up a server inside of VCF's AWS (Amazon) account. This hosts the Mastodon instance. Is VCF Leaving Twitter? No, VCF is exploring Mastodon in conjunction with continuing to use Twitter. Mastodon is an interesting federated technology and as such offers a unique and different way of engaging socially with others on the Internet. It complements Twitter and has some fun new ways of tracking events and postings, more like classic Twitter in terms of a straight non-influenced timeline. Why would I use VCF's Mastodon? There are a few reasons. One: we are here and offering accounts. Some of the larger M. instances have been overwhelmed with requests and are closed to new accounts. The VCF Mastodon Instance (VMI) is open and can allow an easy way for interested individuals to sign up and explore the fediverse with fellow VCF supporters. What did you just say? You can read more about the fediverse here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse It's another interesting technology that has been around for a while but gained recent notoriety as more people have joined up. Mastodon is just one front-end application that participates in the larger fediverse. I have already seeded it with some interesting retro federated sites so you should see postings when you visit. If you decide to join up and start to follow people who are of interest to you it will widen the Federated stream on the site. Please feel free to click on the link and sign up for an account. So far I've found it interesting and fun. You can decide for yourself. If you have questions about using it once you sign up ask me via Mastodon DM me via Masto----> @dillera@social.vcfed.org Again, the VCF Instance is here: https://social.vcfed.org/public Happy Holidays -andy diller Social Media Manager, not Director, at VCFederation