We might do that; but we do tweet quite a lot, which might rile up the blood of Facebook users. We’re still feeling our way around how best to manage that.

We’re doing this because those young people you’re talking about have asked us to. We will, as we do here, moderate properly so misery and humiliation don’t get a look in. (Have to say, your post has made me feel pretty miserable, and I’m a grown-up.)

Hi Clifford. No, I think this is a fantastic day for Raspberry Pi. It’s making RPi as relevant to as many people as possible, particularly to younger people. Surely that’s exactly what the RPi Foundation aims to do.
If the Facebook page gets people (of any age) into RPi & therefore into computing, then Bingo! Job done.
By the way, I stopped being a teen over 20yrs ago.

Stop forcing me to join facebook :P

We very much hope not! Active community-run forums of all kinds are one of the things that has made the Raspberry Pi successful. We’re talking to those with names and profile pictures that make them easy to confuse with the official page, though, so it’ll hopefully become clearer that they’re unofficial.

I second this opinion.
Please post all the important bits of information here.
Thanks.

Totally agree. My comment, in somewhat stronger terms and with concern over opening young people to online abuse, is still awaiting moderation.

Definitely not: this blog will always be the primary source of information. The Facebook page is there specifically because it’s been requested by a lot of kids, whose primary interface with the web is FB; but this site will always be where you should come for news and updates first, and there won’t be anything you’ll miss out on if you aren’t a Facebook user.

As Liz says, we’re on Facebook because teenagers are; if you look at teens’ use of digital communications you find that social networking is second only to text messaging, and among the social networking sites that teenagers use, Facebook is solidly predominant.

Once teenagers become enthusiastic about the Raspberry Pi I think they’ll find their way to other forums too, but it’s important to talk to the ones who are just finding out about it and who don’t see themselves as fitting into any community of programmers or makers yet, and to do that we have to go where they already are.

We know that online interactions aren’t always positive and that this can be a particular problem among young people. It would be naive to think we can completely control how people use the social platforms that we manage, but as Liz says further up the comments, we certainly are in a position to discourage and tackle meanness and bullying.

I agree.

I hope that my posts here will never end up somehow embedded in facebook pages. and somehow entangled by their strange attitude to privacy, or properly said by their ignorance of privacy.

I tried facebook knowing their practices to evaluate the use. I made an informed decision to leave when third party software recommended products in my name to other people without me even knowing about it.

facebook is a danger that I want to protect my children of.

I don’t remember ever agreeing to peacocks. Liz must’ve been plying me with drink to get that one through.

Flamingos, though: now, they make a rather pleasant sort of quacky noise.

Years ago, on the Fens, I was woken by peacocks, and thought it great.
Foxes, now … 3 in the morning, sounding like tortured kids …

The minimum age is 13, so most secondary school/high school students are old enough, but we’re not forgetting that Facebook isn’t the place to reach younger children.