Slack USPA bloggers?

Loyal USPA blog readers may have noticed the lack of recent posts lately. We’re not abandoning the blog, and we certainly have no lack of news! We have recently spread our online wings to include Twitter and Facebook, and are still on MySpace and LinkedIn. Those sites, especially Twitter and Facebook, have been more conducive to the kinds of news we’ve had lately – short, quick updates not really worthy of too many words–140 or less, in fact (that’s the maximum number of characters a Twitter update, or “tweet” can be).

It has been great for things like letting people know the SIM pdf is now updated with bookmarks (www.uspa.org/Portals/0/Downloads/Man_SIM_2009-2010.pdf), that there is a new job opening at USPA (www.uspa.org/aboutuspa/employment.aspx) or that Safety Day reports are online (www.uspa.org/USPAMembers/Safety/SafetyDay/2009Reports.aspx).

Those sites also get more activity and response than the blog has, so we’ll spend a little more time there. We will still be blogging when there is a major story that requires a little more behind-the-scenes, personal explanation, or if inspiration strikes! Let us know if you want to read about anything in particular, too – either comment here, or use the “Why” post (skydiveuspa.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/why/) as a forum to ask your questions about why USPA does some of the things it does.

Here are all the places you can now find USPA online:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/skydiveUSPA
Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/US-Parachute-Association/55722708148
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/_USPA
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=41846
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/SkydiveUSPA

MySpace Top Friends

USPA has been on MySpace for over a year now, and it’s been a great way to catch up with members, see what new skydivers have to say about their jumps, and just have some fun. We’ve also been featuring a different group of MySpace friends in our Top Friends each month. May was skydiving moms for Mother’s Day, June (okay, and July too) was skydiving dads for Father’s Day, and for August we’ve chosen military jumpers as our theme.

If you’re on MySpace and you’re a skydiver who’s also in the military, let us know and we’ll put you in our Top Friends! It’s a great way to showcase the diversity of our members, and give prospective skydivers an idea of who exactly jumps out of these planes. Top Friends are saved in our friend categories, along with drop zones and college clubs, so you can always look back and see who’s where.

If you’re not on MySpace, consider joining and making USPA one of your friends! There are over 2,000 of your fellow jumpers in our friend network. Maybe there’s someone you lost track of and want to catch up with – or maybe there’s a cute guy or girl you’ve seen at the DZ and want to catch up with

We’re thinking about expanding to other social networking sites too, so let us know if you’d rather hook up with us on Facebook or Twitter or Friendster (really? Friendster?) or whatever.