GitHub adds status options, emojis, stokes ‘social network’ fears

GitHub adds status options, emojis, stokes ‘social network’ fears

GitHub landed developers with yet another dilemma this week, by allowing them to set status options in their personal profiles.

As GitHub put it, you might “Use your status to share specific information with only your organization, or share a status with all of GitHub! Optionally, you can indicate that you’re busy so your collaborators can determine whether to mention someone else for a quicker response.” 

Suggested status options include: on vacation, working from home, sick, and focusing, though of course you might want to say shipping, or prepping my next conference presentation, or perhaps “open to recruiters”. Naturally you can augment all of these with an emoji.

The addition came just days after GitHub announced extended starring on GitHub topics.

GitHub said, “Starring topics is a straightforward way for you to tell us what you want to see, so we can help keep you organized and connected to the stuff you care about most. Now we can start displaying more types of content within each topic, like related developers and events.”

Some users were instantly concerned that GitHub is in danger of become a social network instead of sticking to its knitting as a code versioning platform that happens to have feeds, followers, stars, collaboration features, etc…

But any users instantly declared the status addition as a good thing, though some suggested it should allow syncing with all the other statuses techies may – or may not –  be declaring.