How To Get the Most From @U2

If you've only been reading @U2 for the last year or two, you may not know about all the ways to use @U2 and connect with us for your U2 news fix. This guide aims to fix that by making your @U2 user experience as good as it can be!

@U2 News

We have four main distribution points for U2-related news:

@U2 News Database -- This is the permanent record of all important U2 articles we write and find. It's what you're looking at when you see THE NEWS TODAY section in the right column, or the entire News section of the site at http://www.atu2.com/news/. We consider this an archive of all the news that matters most. Anything we post into the main news database is archived for eternity, and you can search for articles all the way back to 1978, when "U2 Malahide" won the talent contest in Limerick.

Bits & Bytes -- This is the section of our home page where we post shorter news items, site announcements & promotions, and so forth. With our site upgrade in 2009, we began to permanently archive all Bits & Bytes in our news database. We also send these items via email to the Yahoo Groups site for our news mailing list, which is the next item on our list.

[atu2] News Mailing List -- This is an announcement-only mailing list where U2 fans receive U2 news by email that we send out. Fans cannot reply to the emails we send; it's not for discussion. It's like a dedicated @U2 news alert service. If you're a U2 fan, you really should be on this mailing list. Why? Because this list is where we send out alerts about all the items posted to the News Database, all the items posted to Bits & Bytes, and a lot more U2 news that never gets posted on the web site. If we hear some U2 news that's interesting, but not important enough to be posted on the web site, we'll send it out only to the mailing list. Every once in a great while, we also offer a prize or something cool that we only send out to our mailing list. Like I said, if you're reading this now, you really should subscribe.

@U2 Blog -- The blog is our fourth distribution point for U2 news. Our entire staff has access to post on the blog, and we share funny, unique, and interesting stories and discoveries -- stuff that doesn't belong on the main site, but might still be interesting to some U2 fans. We often ask for comments from our blog readers, and have excellent discussions on many blog posts. The things we post to the blog are not sent out to the mailing list. But you can (and should) get alerts about blog content by subscribing to the RSS feed. If you still don't know what RSS is and how to use it, please watch this short video (less than 4 minutes) and then get an account with Bloglines or Google Reader.

We have RSS feeds for both the blog and the main News Database, as well as the @U2 Forum.

Other @U2 Services

@U2 Forum -- This is our longstanding message board for fans to share conversations with one another about anything U2-related. It's the best place to chat about the news you see posted here on @U2.

@U2 Podcast -- Our podcast was published regularly between August 2005 and January 2009. At the moment, we are not on a regular publishing schedule, but we plan to continue producing special occasion podcasts in the future.

@U2 on Social Networks

@U2 Facebook Group -- Our Facebook group has more than 4,400 members as of this writing. You can post videos and start discussions with other members. We also post links to some of our original columns and articles. Feel free to join the group and get involved.

@U2 on Twitter -- Twitter is like a large, wide-open chat room. Whereas instant messaging is great for 1-to-1 chats, Twitter allows you to chat with anyone else that's online and see their conversations, too. If you see two of your friends chatting, you can jump in and join the conversation. @U2 uses Twitter as a way to distribute news and updates to U2 fans who have chosen to follow us, as well as to chat with fellow U2 fans and even to get fan feedback for our news coverage. If you're looking to connect with other U2 fans on Twitter, look at the list of people who are following us and start following them. Then say hello. :-)

@U2 on Flickr -- @U2 has a Flickr account where we post U2 photography from our staffers, as well as some photos sent in by readers. We also have an @U2 Flickr group where more than 5,000 other fans are able to share U2-related photos with each other. We invite you to friend us on Flickr and join the @U2 group, too.

@U2 on YouTube -- We have a YouTube account with only a handful of videos, but feel free to friend us anyway. You should also join the @U2 YouTube group, where fans are able to share their own U2-related videos.

Lastly, if you're a user of StumbleUpon, Delicious, or Mixx, feel free to post our articles there and/or vote them up.

Contacting @U2

There are a number of ways to reach us.

@U2 News -- If you have a news tip, send it to news...at...atu2...dot...com. If you'd like to submit a guest article, please read this page to learn how.

@U2 Lyrics -- If you have feedback for Ian, our lyrics guru, send him an email at lyrics...at...atu2...dot...com.

@U2 Calendar -- If you know of an upcoming U2-related event that we may want to list in our Calendar, use this form to tell us about it.

General Feedback/Suggestions -- In the forum, we have one topic dedicated to your feedback and suggestions, and a separate "Help Desk" topic for questions. There are several other topics where you can share feedback on U2 news, lyrics, and so forth.

Contact a Staffer -- We have a Contact Us page where you can meet the staff and email (most of) us directly.

So there you go. Everything you ever wanted to know about @U2, @U2 News and how to get the most out of this site. We strongly encourage you to join the mailing list to get news alerts by email, and learn how to use RSS to receive news from @U2 and all your favorite sites without having to visit each site individually.