Maybe, maybe not related? Member News on old Facebook app deactivation: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread_thread,28972

Don't know. Could it be the one that Didactylos created which looked incredibly similar in name/link to the WCG official site?

Weeeeelll, once upon a time I remember there to have been a WCG tab at top of My Facebook page, but it's gone. I just linked WCG to my profile and then a link appeared in the sidebar that goes to the official site and already had the news feed on the wall... but I'm guessing as a very sparse visitor there.

Maybe we're not connecting... I just added WCG as at http://apps.facebook.com/worldcommunitygrid/ which is the official and then there is the http://apps.facebook.com/world-community-grid/ which is not. I've added both apps, deleted them both and readded WCGs without trouble. Just no tab, only appearing in the side line. My actions were:

Clicked on:

"Already a member? Click Here to Link Your Facebook Account and Your World Community Grid Account"

followed the link back to WCG website, signed in and got:

"You have successfully linked your Facebook and World Community Grid accounts!"

Personally, Facebook is one of those sites that old minds do not understand and need to have my book on hand "English, comprehensive". I'm aghast with this Mark Schmuckenborg or whatever his name is and the way he thinks he's allowed to deal with privacy.

Maybe the My Grid > My Profile page should have an indicator that a Facebook link exists to WCG once to have made the connection?

I have an opinion to express here.

For a long time, I urged WCG to begin Facebook applications in each separate project. That never happened. I do believe that HCMD had their own application; but I do not see it on their site.

But, O.K., WCG, after some halting beginnings, got up a Facebook application and the writing got really good. WCG also adopted a Twitter application.

For what it is worth, BOINC is also represented at Facebook by "Boinc Info". BOINC also has RSS feeds.

It has become apparent to me that for WCG, using Facebook and/or Twitter is little more than "preaching to the choir". Only those who already see the merit in the work are going to sign on, as no one else even knows we are there.

I have now been urging WCG to instead of originating material in these two applications to do it as a blog, linked to Facebook and Twitter. The work is exactly the same, the writing is exactly the same. But, by using "tags", "categories", links, graphics, etc., a blog has the advantage of getting out to a wider world. All the material still goes to BOINC and Twitter.

I have long maintained a blog in music. I know how this works.

So, I started a new blog ScienceSprings, the aim of which is to raise the visibility of the US contribution to worldwide scientific research. The two impeti(?) of this move were the BOINC/WCG Public Distributed Computing juggernaut and the work in the LHC at CERN of scientists from the US, which I am told contributes about 30% of the people and a fair amount of the materiel.

In order to gather news for this blog, I collected every social media source I could find, using The Graybook to which I was pointed by some fellows in the US/LHC contingent at CERN, where there are almost a dozen bloggers.

All of their work is linked to Facebook and Twitter.

I collected RSS feeds, Facebook and Twitter feeds for the US Department of Energy and all of their labs. I have visited the web sites of the High Energy Physics (HEP) departments of over 80 major research universities in the US, and collected all of their RSS feeds and social media.

All of this is what I use to fuel my blog.

I have every RSS feed from every WCG project and Forum, and also the same for every independent project running BOINC software, as well as BOINC itself at UC Berkeley.

Believe me, I know how this works, and I know how to do it. I have received encouragement from a number of the labs supported by the US D.O.E., and from the Baker Lab at the University of Washington from whence cometh Rosetta@home, known very well at WCG in the HPF project, at the Bonneau Lab at New York University.

A number of my posts have involved specific WCG projects and BOINC and WCG in general. They have done very well in getting "views' outside of BOINC and WCG.

I am not taking the time to write this response to blow my own horn. While WCG and BOINC were original sparks of my blog, my ultimate purpose far exceeds those limits.

My point here is to urge the beginning of a blog at WCG, the way it is done and done successfully in many other scientific venues.

You might well ask, if all of these other people are doing this work that I am using for my blog, why does anyone need my blog? The answer is, you never know who is going to do what kind of search based on keywords and what that search will turn up.

I do not know who reads here from WCG, but I will keep on beating this drum.