@bloodbowl on Twitter

[Milo]

I've taken over the @bloodbowl twitter account from the previous owner, who had been using it to promote his Danger Dome blood bowl league several years ago but had not been using it recently. I'm wanting to start using it to provide news and information to Blood Bowl fans. One of the problems, as I see it, with the state of BB today is that the fanbase is very splintered. Some fans post here, some fans post on the NAF forums, others use Zlurpee forums, etc. and so to get a message out to everyone, you really have to try to find all the nooks and crannies that BB fans reside in.

One of the advantages of Twitter, of course, is that it's designed for easy, quick announcement style posts, and many of the clients allow you to get automatic notifications when something relevant is posted to one of the feeds you follow. By following a single twitter feed, BB coaches could get updates of Tournament postings/results, NAF changes, kickstarters for new BB teams, releases from BB mini manufacturers, that sort of information.

So my questions are:

First, would you be interested and follow the feed, and
Secondly, what sort of information would you most like to see on it? Is there anything I've forgotten that would be good to tweet out?

[lunchmoney]

Talk to Sann who already runs the @OfficialNAF twitter account. You might be duplicating a lot of his work.

[sann0638]

Yep, what he said. Lots of people use #bloodbowl, and the most widely relevant of these I retweet from @officialnaf. Do take a look at the OfficialNAF facebook page and thenaf.net, to see what already exists, then happy to have more ideas!

[Milo]

I'm not trying to step on any toes. Just trying to do my part to promote Blood Bowl on the internet, as I did in the past. I've already reached out to Sann to try to find a way to collaborate and not just duplicate each other's efforts.

[howlinggriffon]

Would there be an issue with Tweeting from @bloodbowl ? Its still a GW trademark. We all know how protective they get over their IP.

I couldn't give a stuff about GW but I wouldn't want to see you to get any hassle from it.

[Milo]

I think the WORST they could do would be send me a C&D letter. Cross that bridge when -- and if -- we get to it. And there's certainly an argument I could make that they failed to defend that trademark when I ran the Bloodbowl.net website for several years with their knowledge. I guess that gives me a better defense than most. In any case, the previous owner used it for some time without hassle, I gather.

[sann0638]

An excerpt from what I sent to Milo over PM:

It's an interesting question as to what to do with @bloodbowl, as @officialnaf has almost 700 followers, @bloodbowl_game (the Cyanide one) has 1200, despite being very quiet. I try to keep our twitter account dedicated to tabletop, which is basically how I filter the things that use the #bloodbowl tag, which covers both. Not sure what the answer is, but avoiding duplication of effort would be a good idea! Thoughts welcome.

Thoughts from others welcome too!

The "splintering" is an issue, I completely agree, but I'm not convinced a "new" account is the way to do this - even if it's a more traditional name. I'm pretty sure it might be possible to change @officialnaf to @bloodbowl, so that all the @officialnaf followers moved to @bloodbowl, but I'm not sure this is necessarily desirable as tabletop news is often different to Cyanide news, and there is an argument for keeping the two separate.

[lunchmoney]

The "splintering" is an issue, I completely agree, but I'm not convinced a "new" account is the way to do this - even if it's a more traditional name. I'm pretty sure it might be possible to change @officialnaf to @bloodbowl, so that all the @officialnaf followers moved to @bloodbowl, but I'm not sure this is necessarily desirable as tabletop news is often different to Cyanide news, and there is an argument for keeping the two separate.

Changing to @bloodbowl is simple. Just delete @bloodbowl then change @officialNAF to @bloodbowl.
Personally I'd keep @officialNAF

[sann0638]

I agree.

[Milo]

I'm willing to give it up if the NAF decided they wanted it, but I think there's room for both, personally. I planned to use the @bloodbowl feed to announce new BB-related products, sales on BB-related stuff, odds and ends (like Dr. Fassbender's awesome casualty dice), other commercial items like that which are of interest to BB coaches but the NAF might not want to promote for fear of seeming to sponsor them.

Ultimately, I'm just looking for a way to help the BB community.

[sann0638]

I think in general the NAF is happy to advertise suppliers: http://www.thenaf.net/resources/suppliers/

But sure, there's room for both accounts. People follow hundreds of accounts on Twitter, after all

[howlinggriffon]

But sure, there's room for both accounts. People follow hundreds of accounts on Twitter, after all

Totally agree with this. MOAR BLOOD BOWL!

[connexion]

I planned to use the @bloodbowl feed to announce new BB-related products, sales on BB-related stuff, odds and ends (like Dr. Fassbender's awesome casualty dice), other commercial items like that which are of interest to BB coaches but the NAF might not want to promote for fear of seeming to sponsor them.

That seems like a very sensible idea as well.

[TheDancingClown]

I don't use twitter but I do think there is space for another feed that gathers together all BB related information including Cyanide and tabletop. There is a slight risk of information overload if you are including tournaments all over the world, miniatures releases, team pictures, etc but I think if it helps reach out to a PC gamer who never realised there is an activity tabletop community (maybe even local to them) then it is definitely a worthwhile thing.

As you said there are different sites people go to for their BB fix so seeing highlights from sites I don't visit regularly would be useful but I do think that the site splintering is important to streamline information and so quite happy to have the numerous different 'specialist' sites and I can pick and choose what interests me