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Bob Wertz

Type designer, creative director and Ph.D. student in Columbia, South Carolina

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    Jul 30, 2023 ∞

    Threads as a "federated" brand solution

    When the exodus from Twitter first started last year, many tech-savvy people were moving to Mastodon and I wondered if brands would move their accounts to self hosted instances. After all, from a branding standpoint, @offical@starbucks.com is better than @starbucks@mastodon.social. At the end of that post, I posited that someone would come along with a service that handled the fediverse complexity for companies. That service is Threads. Lots of people have asked why Meta was interested in providing ActivityPub support.

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    Jul 25, 2023 ∞

    Twitterless: The Final Chapter

    I’ve been preparing for Twitter’s demise for seven years, but I didn’t see ‘X’ coming. I’ve been preparing for the end of Twitter since 2016, when Twitter was struggling with some financial issues and the future was uncertain. I pondered what would happen of Twitter went away suddenly. 2016: Twitterless: Which got me thinking, what if we woke up one morning and Twitter was gone. Or more likely, what if Twitter changed so radically, that it was unusable?

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    Jul 23, 2023 ∞

    We’ve always had independent media. Why should social media be any different?

    New social media outlets prove the viability of indie social. The invention of the printing press made mass media possible. Printing houses produced popular books and bibles, but they also spread the writing that powered the Reformation. Major newspapers became was the dominant media for decades, but there have always been community and independent newspapers. Self-publishing, indie music, art house films and college radio are all forms of independent media.

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    Jul 4, 2023 ∞

    The Instagram Threads launch and media effects theory

    Yesterday, I mentioned I was interested in the media narrative surrounding the introduction of Instagram Threads. I wanted to expand on what I’m looking for, and to do that, I need to start with some mass communications theory. I’m a Ph.D. student that mostly researches visual effects, but I’ve taken a few classes that look at how media effects work. There are levels to media effects, but essentially, you can break it into three types of effects.

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    Jul 3, 2023 ∞

    Three questions ahead of the release of Instagram's Threads

    I looks like Meta will release their text-based, Instagram-branded Twitter competitor this week. Am I excited about Instagram Threads? Not really. I’m happy with the current state of my social media usage. Am I curious about it? Absolutely. We are in a fascinating period of change in the services we use online and the ways we share information. Specifically, I’m interested in three questions: Will Instagram users actually adopt it?

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    Dec 1, 2022 ∞

    Brands: Federated

    Self-hosted social There’s lots of hype about Mastodon as people flee Twitter, but lately, I’ve been thinking about how brands will function on federated social sites. If the big brands in the world are going to give Mastodon a shot, they aren’t going to just join an existing instance… they’ll host their own server for all of their related accounts. Let’s say you are a large international brand like Starbucks. Are you going to use @starbucks@mastodon.

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    Nov 20, 2022 ∞

    The balance between broadcast and engagement

    Content is more important than commentary. When the internet was becoming popular, I remember being told that traditional media was just broadcasting. The internet promised more than just broadcasting, it offered “engagement.” Don’t let people fool you. Engagement happened before the internet. People read the newspaper and talked about stories with their family and friends. They watched the evening news and discussed it at the water cooler at work the next day.

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    Nov 6, 2022 ∞

    Live events and social media

    One thing that Twitter excels at — which will be difficult to replace — is commentary during live events. Last night, I was able to follow a range of commentary on several college football games and the World Series all from my Twitter feed. It’s not just who I follow, it’s also the way the service is constructed. When following a bunch of live events, you need to use the non-algorithmic timeline.

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bobwertz.com is hosted on Micro.Blog and uses the Tiny theme designed by Matt Langford. "Bob Wertz" in the header and titles on the long posts are set in Powertrain Narrow Black, one of my typeface designs. You can purchase the my fonts on MyFonts.

Bob Wertz Robert Allan Wertz Website, Email
United States of America
Bob Wertz is a Columbia, South Carolina-based designer, creative director and mass communications Ph.D. student.

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