Social

Mar 18, 2025 ∞

Writing became secondary.

Dave Winer writing about the “the Writer’s Web”:

The web was initially designed for writers. Styling, links, paragraphs, titles (at all levels). The ability to edit. No character limits. That’s what we had to work with when we started blogging in the mid-late 90s.

What happened to the writer-centric web I loved in the late 1990s? Building a regular readership is challenging. In the earliest days, sites linked to other sites. Bloggers shared work from other bloggers. RSS provided the ability to subscribe to sites, but after Google killed Reader, the focus turned exclusively to search engines and social media. The competition to be at the top of the search results reshaped writing on the web. The ever-changing social media algorithm provided an audience for writers, but maintaining that audience changed the nature of writing on the web.

Blogs became about ad revenue. Search engine traffic and optimization. Building a “side gig.” Success became about building an audience on each proprietary social media platform. Increasing your follower count. Becoming an influencer. Writing click bait headlines to maximize engagement. Getting subscribers for your newsletter. Blogging became “hard” because it wasn’t about writing anymore. It was about marketing.

Writing became secondary.

So how do we bring the emphasis on writing back to the web? The good news is that great writing is already all over the web. It’s just overwhelmed by all this platform-siloed, revenue-focused, engagement bullshit. It’s hidden among the sea of SEO-laden posts that flood the web. It’s bottled up on Medium or Substack, and other platforms that promise the exposure of social media.

If we value writing on the web, we need to link to good writing and thoughtful commentary. Share what we find through our own sites. Read independent writing and respond. Encourage others to share their thoughts outside of social media silos. I’m glad Dave specifically asked for people to respond to the concept of the “Writer’s Web” because it spurred me to write this post. And hopefully, others will keep this conversation going as well.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

Feb 4, 2025 ∞

I love Iconfactory’s Tapestry – a unified timeline for my iPhone

New app lets iOS users weave together sources

When the Iconfactory announced their Tapestry Kickstarter, I backed it immediately. I’ve been a fan of the Iconfactory’s work for decades, and was a loyal user of Twitteriffic before Musk cut off the API. I’ve had beta access for months as a Kickstarter perk and I’ve been using it daily.¹ Now that Tapestry is released to everyone, I wanted to write a little review with some thoughts about how it’s working for me.

Screenshots of Tapestry, a unified feed reader for iOS.

One app for pretty much everything. Tapestry is a unified feed reader. You build a feed from a variety of sources and “connectors.” I’ve used connectors to bring in my Micro.Blog, Mastodon and Bluesky social timelines. I still use Feedbin as a traditional feed reader so I’ve also some of my favorite RSS feeds and some YouTube channels. I even have a podcast feed in there and, while I wouldn’t listen to a long podcast in Tapestry, it does works for short audio files. All of it pulled together into a single timeline.

You said “pretty much everything?” Correct. To be added to Tapestry, the sources need to connect to the open web. That means no Meta apps. So if you want to connect to Instagram, Facebook or Threads, there isn’t an API to allow for a connection. This isn’t a problem with Tapestry, it’s a problem with Meta. But don’t get me started on the importance of open APIs.

Algorithm free. Tapestry doesn’t add any annoying algorithms to your content feed. You decide who you want to follow, and you see their posts in the order in which they were shared. No engagement manipulation.

Interaction. You can’t like or comment directly from the Tapestry interface, but it’s easy to swipe and access a Safari web view. For example, if I see a Bluesky post I want to like, I swipe and Bluesky opens. I like the post, click done at the top left, and I’m back to my feed. It’s a smart solution to a complex problem. I’m not someone who likes or comments a bunch so this little bit of friction is completely acceptable to me. I understand if this isn’t enough for you, but it works for me. You can “Mark” items for follow up later, and I find that helpful for keeping track of good links and stories.

Muffle and Mute. You can build rules to muffle (collapse) or mute (hide) posts that contain keywords. I find this to be incredibly powerful. There’s a person I know — who I want to follow — who shares his Wordle every day. So I muffled “Wordle” in my feed. You can build those rules to hide whatever you don’t want to see. I loved it in Twitteriffic and will absolutely use this in Tapestry.²

Opportunities and rough edges. This is a 1.0 version. There are rough edges, but also clear opportunities for them to improve the app. The Iconfactory is committed to improving Tapestry and offering a Mac version eventually. I’m excited about where this is going.

I’ve really enjoyed Tapestry because I can just dip into the most recent information. And since Micro.Blog and Bluesky are currently my most used services, this integrates perfectly. It’s tough to explain, but it brings a social media style timeline together for a wider variety of sources. It’s not for everyone, but it is absolutely what I want.

Tapestry is now available on the App Store for iOS free with ads. Or if you want no ads and premium features, it’s just $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

If you tried the beta early and it wasn’t what you were expecting, now that it’s out of beta, try again. Tapestry got better and better over each iteration. ↩︎
I’ve also muffled any reference to “Clemson” or “Dabo.” Because Go Gamecocks. ↩︎

Jan 23, 2025 ∞

Parasocial

In one of my early grad school classes, we had a conversation and some readings on parasocial relationships… mostly one-sided relationships you “build” with people that you watch on tv, listen to on the radio, or subscribe to their podcasts. We think we know these people. Maybe at some point we met them, but our real “relationship” is surface level. We might know their favorite athlete or actor, but have no idea what their spouse’s name is. We may know all about them, but they don’t actually know we exist.

(My grandmother had a very strong parasocial connection to the Augusta, Georgia NBC affiliate morning show hosts. She would tell me all about them when I visited, as though she knew them.)

Social media is a little different than local television celebrities. You can have interchanges and discussions, but the reality is that these are also incomplete. You can’t get to know someone fully through a series of short posts, comments or reactions. Especially for people with heavily curated and crafted feeds. Look, it’s hard enough to get to really know a person when you meet them in person. Getting to know someone online is even harder. And yet, we often fall into the trap of making broad assumptions based on what we can see through a pixel-sized knothole in a digital walled garden.

I try not to fall into that trap. Sure, I decide whether I want to continue to follow them. Do I want to let them into my feed. Do I want to interact with this person? And like with in person relationships, my opinion of someone can change over time. I’ve definitely followed people only to find out later that they aren’t aligned with my interests. I’ve followed people who I agree with politically and whose work I largely admire, but their social media feed is so unhinged, that I have to unfollow them. But I don’t ever believe I know someone simply based on their social media presence. It’s just a type of quasi-parasocial relationship.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

Nov 23, 2024 ∞

Refining my social media approach

The last two weeks has seen a surge in Bluesky usage. I’ve been on Bluesky a little since the early days. I liked the service, but I didn’t know any one there. That’s changed now and lots of friends are posting. That’s added a touch more complexity, so I figured I’d share how I’m handling my personal social media right now.

I post everything to Micro.Blog. It shows up on bobwertz.com.
Micro.Blog crossposts everything to Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon.
I have notifications turned off on my iPhone, so I have no idea when people respond to what I post.
I selectively choose when I want to engage with social media on whatever site feels right at the time.

A couple of random things I’ve noticed lately:

My Instagram usage has dropped dramatically, probably because it isn’t tied in with my crossposting system. They don’t have a posting API, so no one can really add that connection. I like Instagram, but I don’t have time for everything.
Cotton Bureau included one of my shirt designs in their 25% off sale. Normally, I would have helped promote on Instagram and Twitter, but I checked and they were on Bluesky and Threads. So I promoted it there. Companies used to do this kind of promotion on Twitter and Instagram. It’s nice to see them active on Bluesky and Threads.

I’m excited to see social media evolving and changing. Hopefully, we can keep the momentum going and continue to move toward better, healthier online communities.

Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

Oct 16, 2024 ∞

Pluralistic: You should be using an RSS reader:

RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.

Aug 18, 2024 ∞

Professionally, I feel like I need to maintain a LinkedIn profile. Also, I have no idea what to do with LinkedIn.

Jul 23, 2024 ∞

Open Social vs. Indie Social

Choosing our words carefully

I wrote a blog post in early 2019, trying to make a distinction between “open” social platforms that thrived on interoperability compared to “captive” networks that trap you in their system. As an aside, I also noted the difference between “indie” social and “open” social and added this footnote:

I recognize that the concept of an open social network from a large corporation might seem absurd in today’s environment, but you never know.

Five years later, we have Threads, a somewhat open social network from a large corporation with a track record of building toxic captive networks. The word “open” in this case is distinct from “indie,” since no one can ever claim that Meta is a small independent company. But in the case of Threads, they do seem to be moving toward being more open.¹

I think it’s important to make a distinction, between open and captive social networks, but also between open and indie networks.² Our goal should be interoperability between our networks. The indie web is a big part of this effort, driving the technology and the open social philosophy forward. But I believe it’s going to take some of the large players truly adopting open social protocols to make true interoperability a reality.

These layers are all complicated, and how we talk about it matters, especially when talking with less tech savvy audiences. As advocates for interoperability online, I think we need to do a better job communicating how our goals will benefit everyone. Using accessible language is a big part of that effort.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

I completely understand your skepticism. ↩︎
There are indie social companies that are not committed to interoperability. ↩︎

Jul 18, 2024 ∞

Sticker Mule: A bad equation

The Sticker Mule email arrived in my inbox, but I didn’t see it at first. Instead, I saw the backlash on Threads.

Here’s the thing, I knew the owner was conservative, but it didn’t really matter to me. I’d randomly order stickers (or keychains) whenever they had a great special. And they ran specials a lot.

Many companies take stands on issues as a way to signal their values. But most of the time, those topics are carefully chosen to align with their customer beliefs. There is an entire discipline in public relations scholarship called Corporate Social Responsibility that studies this strategy.

But this crosses a line. Blasting your entire business mailing list with a political message — a mailing list that is a massive asset to your sales funnel — is just stupid.

Why? You are choosing to voluntarily spam your mailing list with a political message that half of your list likely finds objectionable. Look at the last two presidential elections. Over half of the U.S. voted against him. Twice.

And add to that the nerve of trying to use an attempted assassination to sell shirts. Incomprehensible.

Anyway, I unsubscribed. I’ve got a Sticker Mule sticker on a water bottle that I’ll cover up. I’ll find another vendor and he’s apparently got plenty of business from people that agree with him.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.

Jul 3, 2024 ∞

Twitterless: An Epilogue

I wrote a post in 2016 asking how I would deal with the inevitable demise of Twitter. And followed up with posts in 2018, 2022 and 2023.¹

In each of the post, one common refrain kept resurfacing. There is no equal for following a live event on Twitter. The last month or so, there have been several events in tech and sports that I would have followed closely on Twitter.

You know what? I didn’t miss Twitter at all.

Instead, I stuck with Micro.Blog and Threads. On Micro.Blog, I follow not only other Micro.Blog users, but I also follow a number of Mastodon users who I previously followed on Twitter. Most of those people are journalists or experts who I do not know personally. On Threads, I follow mostly people that I know personally, many of whom have common interests. These two services combined provided everything I needed. I didn’t even think about logging back into Twitter.

Finally, I’m baffled by friends who remain active on Twitter despite everything that Musk has said and done. They seem addicted to their “audience” and are scared to lose “engagement.” There are other options and it’s time to move on. The sooner you start building a new audience, the sooner you can leave Twitter.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.

I’ve added all of these posts to bobwertz.com as part of my project to move older posts to this site. ↩︎

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. I honestly think part of the story is so Meta can tell brands – their advertisers – that they can just publish on Threads and it will eventually be accessible on any other non-Twitter platform. Of course, they’ve still got to deliver on that promise… right now Threads doesn’t have ActivityPub support.

So far, branded accounts have flocked to Threads. If @BRAND-NAME@threads.com becomes the default for official branded social content, Meta benefits. I still think companies would be better off owning their instance with a branded domain, and maybe we will get there some day, but for now, it looks like Threads is where the brands are headed.

(I think that eventually, Meta will offer an upgraded “brand tier” that allows companies to use their own domain instead of @threads.com. for a substanial fee, of course.)

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.

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?

I’m more concerned that Twitter, or a company that buys Twitter, will change it so completely, that it becomes useless.

Fast forward a little over a year later. Twitter’s financial issues were less dire, but they were struggling with flat user growth, coupled with a rise in abuse and hate on the platform.

2018: Twitterless, Part II:¹

As Twitter tries to jumpstart the service, I still believe the likelihood of Twitter imploding within the next few years is high.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, I assumed he’d shake things up, but I was concerned about the direction he would take Twitter in. I wrote a third Twitterless post to recap the changes that I’d made to deal with the hypothetical demise of Twitter.

2022: Twitterless, Part III:

If Twitter ceases to be enjoyable, I’ll leave. To be honest, I’ll miss it. I joined in 2008 and 14 years is a long time to use any service. It’s part of my daily routine. At the end of the day, though, if a service isn’t making my life better, I’m better off without it.

Once Twitter abruptly cut off third party clients, my Twitter usage dropped dramatically. I was a Twitteriffic user for over a decade, and it was obvious from the way he handled that situation that Elon Musk’s Twitter wasn’t going to be what I wanted. I moved on.²

Now, he’s changing the name of Twitter to X. I always assumed that someone would buy Twitter for the brand equity and change the service to make it more profitable. Instead, Musk changed the service and destroyed an iconic brand, all while making it less profitable.

I am going to miss Twitter. I’ve mostly enjoyed it over the years. I care enough about my own tweet history, that earlier this year, when Manton offered a way to import all of my Twitter history, I moved 15 years worth of tweets into a searchable database hosted here on Micro.Blog. I don’t know what I’ll use it for, but I do like having it.

I feel like I’ve prepared adequately for the Twitter apocalypse, but there is one area in particular where the loss of Twitter will still hurt. A common thread through all three Twitterless posts was a lament that there aren’t other services optimized for following breaking news or live events. This is still true. Maybe Threads,³ Bluesky or Mastodon can step in, but until then, I’ll miss Twitter most when watching a sporting event, an Apple keynote or following a local news story. For the last few months, I’ve been viewing Twitter to check in during big events, but the time has come to move on.

Twitter is finally dead.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.

The illustration at the top is the one that accompanied the 2018 post. ↩︎
RIP Twitteriffic ↩︎
It will be tough without a chronological timeline, though. ↩︎

Jul 23, 2023 ∞

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

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.

Economy of scale¹ pushes these systems toward consolidation. But as these media outlets consolidate into a few major players, there is always a market for an alternative. Why should social media be any different?

When the internet became popular, personal sites and blogs were the ultimate form of independent media. Economy of scale kicked in like it always does. Large news sites dominate and Google Search drives the traffic to the largest most well established sites.² Blogs became less popular, but there are still many independent blogs and personal sites around the internet.

With social media, consolidation drove us to a handful of sites. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and Snapchat. The funding model drove this as well… Venture capital investment bet on the next big social media winner, and sites either made it big, or disappeared. (RIP: Path, Vine, Periscope, Gowalla, Google+, Google Wave.) I wasn’t sure there was space for independent social media.

All of the attention right now is on Meta’s Threads and the cage match with Twitter, but there’s a lot more going on in the space. Elon’s purchase and erosion of Twitter³ has opened the doors to alternatives. ActivityPub is starting to take root that will allow some interoperability between sites. I’ve been a Micro.Blog subscriber for years and it’s a wonderful independent social space.⁴ Mastodon and Bluesky are both putting forward their visions for an open web. And users are adapting Discord and other sites to create smaller, independent communities.

These sites now have a large enough user base to stick around, and technical solutions like ActivityPub allow easy access to creators on other networks. The businesses aren’t (currently) poisoned by the venture capital desire to grow fast and get rich. This is how a healthy independent social media ecosystem develops.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.

The idea that businesses become more efficient as they get larger. ↩︎
Or the ones that have loaded their sites with SEO friendly keywords. ↩︎
Or is it X? ↩︎
And blogging platform. ↩︎

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.¹

Agenda Setting tells you what to think about.
Framing tells you how to think about it.
Priming prompts you to take an action.

Everyone teaches this a little differently, but this is how I like to think about it. As I look at how the media covers Instagram’s Thread, I think it’s worth thinking about the coverage in these terms.

Agenda Setting

The media is very good and setting the “agenda” for what people are thinking about. If the media you watch or read is covering a topic, you are more likely to care about the topic.

We know that the tech media like The Verge have picked up the thread and predictably, tech circles online are discussing what Instagram Threads will mean for social media and the Fediverse. This is agenda setting in action.

But will the mass media cover it? Will the CNN website run a story about Instagram Threads? Will The NY Times run an explainer about how to use Threads? Will South-Carolina-native and all-around good guy Craig Melvin talk about Threads on the Today Show? I don’t know.

While “agenda setting” sounds a little nefarious, it isn’t always. There are many factors that go into story selection. One major challenge right now is the crowded media environment. Take a look at the front pages of major news websites and what do you see? Supreme Court rulings. Mass shootings. Russia’s mutiny. Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Trump’s indictments. Protests in France. The U.S. relationship with China. Interest rates. Inflation. These topics all compete for space and time in a news organization. Does the introduction of a new service from Meta really rank up there in importance with these other topics?

News media also pay attention to metrics about their readership. If viewers are reading stories about Threads, editors will assign more stories. If people aren’t interested in the topic, it will fade. There seems to be general interest in the Elon Musk’s mismanagement of Twitter and his rivalry with Mark Zuckerberg. If people are reading the stories about Threads, maybe Meta does get a little more coverage than something like this would normally merit.²

Honestly, I’ll know if there is mass media coverage when my wife asks me what I think about it.

Framing

The next level relates to how the stories are positioned. We know that tech media is framing the release of Instagram Threads as the latest change in a rapidly changing social media world. The stories right now seem to be largely framed as a contrast with existing Twitter alternatives, especially given the conversations within Mastodon admins about whether to preemptively block access to a service that may support ActivityPub.

But for a mass media audience, that’s all too nuanced. Given the high profile implosion of Twitter, and the bravado between Musk and Zuckerberg, I think pretty much every story is going to frame Instagram Threads as a Twitter-killer. I do imagine that they’ll at least mention Mastodon and Bluesky. Beyond that, who knows.

Priming

If the mass media covers the introduction of Threads – and the framing is positive – the coverage may be enough to prompt people to sign up for accounts. This priming effect is typically short-lived, but if Meta is able to get a lot of news coverage, there may be a surge in sign ups not too dissimilar to the surge in interest surrounding Mastodon and Bluesky. This won’t necessarily translate into engaged customers, but getting people to download the app and try the service is the first hurdle for Meta.

So as you look at the media coverage surrounding the launch of Instagram Threads, think about it in terms of agenda setting, framing and priming. (And actually, as you look at media bias in general, these three concepts are helpful in understanding how it works and why it happens.)

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.

I’ve massively simplified things, so if one of my professors sees this… I’m sorry. ↩︎
Unlike Twitter, Facebook actually has a public relations team. They should be able to round up some significant coverage. ↩︎

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? This is the big question. Will the people I follow on Instagram start accounts? And will they post content that I’m interested in? What will the demographics of the user base be? So many question about what this audience might look like.
How will the ActivityPub implementation work? As a devoted Micro.Blog user, I’m interested in the rumored ActivityPub integration. Will I be able to follow Threads users on Micro.Blog? Can I cross post from Micro.Blog? As the first mainstream ActivityPub implementation, it will be interesting to see how they connect with the larger Fediverse.
What’s the media narrative? It’s guaranteed that there will be a direct contrast with the dumpster fire that Twitter has become, but what other media narratives will take shape. How will it be compared to Mastodon and Bluesky? Will media coverage increase consumer knowledge about the ActivityPub? Sounds like a research paper for grad school.

I’ll probably sign up for an account, since Instagram is pretty much the only social media I use other than Micro.Blog. And we’ll see what happens.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.

Dec 1, 2022 ∞

Brands: Federated

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.social? Not when you can have @official@starbucks.com, @news@starbucks.com, and @customercare@starbucks.com. If you run your own instance, you never have to worry about someone grabbing a handle you wanted to use. No worries about the content moderation policy on the instance you’ve selected. And because of the way ActivityPub works, your posts will be visible across Mastodon and other compatible services. As a bonus, it’s much harder for a fraudulent account to spoof you if you connect your federated social account to your primary domain name.

(In reality, someone will create a service to manage this for brands and charge big money for it, because there is no way a corporate IT department is going to accept the risk of running a Mastodon instance.)

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. They wrote letters to the editor to express their agreement or disapproval. They called radio shows to ask questions. They bought classified ads to share a job listing or sell a car. People engaged with media before the internet.

Instead, what the internet offered was an instant, two-way feedback loop between publisher and audience. Comments on blogs and news sites led the way. Then, social media provided the ultimate in real time engagement with metrics that let you track everything.

Instant response. Maximum engagement. Integrated with the content.

And how has that worked out? Thoughtful comments on blogs were quickly drowned out with spam. News sites were filled with reactionary opinions. Social media offered both reactionary opinions and spam and as a bonus channeled hate and harassment. Managing commentary takes as much staff and resources as creating the content, but people love providing their opinion and arguing their point of view, which drives traffic. And that traffic was the most important thing to the companies like Facebook and Twitter that sell the advertising that surrounds the hate.

As Twitter implodes and some people look for what’s next, I think we need to reexamine the relationship between publishing and engagement. Creation and commentary. True engagement is what follows when we create high-quality, beneficial content. We need to restore a focus on publishing the content, not just on the commentary. And our new technologies need to support that balance.

P.S. One of the things I like about Micro.Blog is the absence of metrics. No follower counts. No likes. No retweets. If you are used to obsessively checking how many likes your last post got, the absence of metrics takes a little getting used to, but it resets the balance between publishing and engagement.

P.S.S. It occurs to me that the most profitable company in the world, Apple, creates a lot of content without maintaining a traditional social media presence.

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. Twitter still, begrudgingly, allows for that. Facebook has many of the people I follow on Twitter, but the comments are jumbled, appearing whenever the algorithm decides, often incoherently out of order. And I can’t see following my South Carolina Gamecocks on another large service, like Linked In. 🤣

Perhaps the real question is if I need the stream of commentary at all? I get value out of live commentary from sports journalists and other fans. I feel like it ads to my enjoyment, but I enjoyed watching games before Twitter existed. Maybe live events is one of those areas where I need to reexamine my reliance on social media.

Jan 3, 2018 ∞

Twitterless, Part II

A year ago, I decided to lessen my reliance on Twitter. Here’s my progress so far…

A closeup of a Twitter bird with Xs in the eyes.

This post was originally posted on January 3, 2018 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog post pondering what would change in my workflow if Twitter disappeared. At the time, Twitter was actively looking for buyers and had just shut down Vine. I identified what I would miss without Twitter and decided to start looking for options to address some potential pain points.

In the last year, the narrative has shifted from Twitter’s possible sale to issues with abuse and hatred. Twitter increased the character count to 280 and that’s worked out fine, but its user growth is still flat. As Twitter tries to jumpstart the service, I still believe the likelihood of Twitter imploding within the next few years is high.

I thought I’d revisit my areas of concern from my previous post and share what I’ve done to mitigate those issues.

I’d lose a bunch of contacts. My first concern was that I’d lose a bunch of contacts that I only had on Twitter. I’m a little less concerned about this than I was a year ago. I’ve slowly started to connect with more people, experts and brands on other services like LinkedIn and Facebook. I’ve still got a ways to go and will continue to expand the roster of people I follow on other services.

I’d change how I watch live events. I’m still using Twitter during live events. For me, this is the hardest to replace. During the Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl this week,¹ I kept up with commentary from reporters and friends on Twitter. Following commentary on live events is challenging through Facebook. Posts don’t appear in sequential order because of their algorithm.

Twitter is simply the best option to handle streaming written commentary during an event. I’m sure I could use something like Snapchat, but I don’t know enough people on Snapchat for it to be useful for me.²

I’d have to rethink how I find articles and stories. This was a big issue for me, but I’ve kind of solved it… by cheating a little bit. I’ve started using Nuzzel³ to surface headlines from my social media services. Not familiar with Nuzzel? It’s a pretty simple service. You connect your social media services — Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — and Nuzzel tells you what links your friends (and friends of your friends) are sharing. This works really well for finding the links and articles that your social circle is talking about… without actually going into Twitter or Facebook. It’s cheating because 95% of the links that come up are from people I follow on Twitter. I really like the service and I see lots of links I would have otherwise missed. I highly recommend it.

I’ve upgraded to Feedly Pro and I’m being more intentional about subscribing to interesting RSS feeds. I’m going to continue to expand my use of Feedly.

I find Facebook useless for finding actual news stories unless I want to know “27 Secrets from The Last Jedi” or some crappy, clickbait slideshow link. And LinkedIn seems equally useless for finding content that I’m interested in.

I need to give Medium another chance, but for some reason, I just haven’t been interested in building an account on Medium with people I follow and read regularly. Maybe that’s something to look into more in 2018.

I’d have to rethink how I share content. Sharing the content I create is another issue. I’m sharing more widely on other services, but I’m still using Twitter. For 2018, I’m shifting most of my short format posting to Micro.Blog with automatic cross posting to Twitter.

And to promote most of my blog posts or interesting content, I schedule posts through Buffer to several different services.

I’ve thought about reposting my blog posts and articles on Medium, but it seems like a lot of work to post everything twice. (And only posting to Medium is not an option for me. I want everything hosted on my site.) I may try Medium again.

I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I can’t get into Dribbble. I love the concept and I love the community, but it just doesn’t match up with the way I work. Still, the community is great so maybe I’ll give it another shot in 2018.

And finally, Pinterest. For some of my content — specifically my shirt and product designs — Pinterest is a great service. But I haven’t really spent that much time in Pinterest personally, so that might be another avenue I explore in 2018.

I’d change the way I use Facebook. So Facebook… I really do think that we’ve reached the point where you have to have a Facebook account, unfortunately. In today’s communications environment, Facebook is a necessary evil. Over the last year, Facebook has had its own problems with hatred, fake news and discrimination, though, and I’d love to reduce my reliance on Facebook, too.

Facebook is a great place to share family photos, but for serious content, I don’t think it works well. I’ve started to build an audience for the Sketchbook B Facebook page and I’m going to continue to promote the page and hopefully expand the number of followers. That said, I feel like Facebook’s algorithm is going to hide my content unless I pay to promote it, which I may start to do selectively.

I’d spend more time on Instagram. I still love Instagram.⁴ A couple years ago, I switched my account from a personal account to a business account. The bonus was that I could see viewer metrics, but the drawback was that it would only let me cross post to my Facebook Sketchbook B business page, not my personal profile. Since most of my Instagram shots are family or fun shots, I want to cross post those to my personal Facebook page. I don’t really care about metrics so I recently switched back to the personal account.

I plan to cross post my fun family Instagram images to Twitter and Facebook more regularly. I also plan to manually repost from Instagram to Micro.Blog. It’s a little bit of work, but I like having everything on my site.

I’d try to find a replacement. A little over a year ago, I was guessing that if Twitter disappeared, someone would rise up and meet the needs of its former user base. I didn’t have to wait until Twitter disappeared. A few months after I wrote my post, Manton Reece launched his Micro.Blog Kickstarter project. Micro.Blog is a service that allows me to host my microblog posts — basically, tweets — on my own site and then share through a social media service. Manton’s done a great job so far, and I really think that Micro.Blog is the tip of the iceberg for a resurgence of the independent web. The service isn’t for everyone and it’s in the early days. Manton is still figuring out how some features will work, but I think it’s a great fit for me. (I’m going to write a lot more about Micro.Blog this month, including why I’m excited about it, and detailing how I configured my Squarespace blog to work with Micro.Blog.)

Reality check. I’m not completely giving up on Twitter, though. I’ve been a Twitter user since 2007 and Twitter is part of my daily routine. It’s just a less enjoyable part of my daily routine now. This year, I backed Twitteriffic for Mac on Kickstarter because I wanted my favorite Twitter client on my Mac.

Times are changing, though, and I honestly believe that we all need to be diversifying — and if possible, owning — our social media presence. Becoming less reliant on the big social media behemoths is the first step.

I look forward to revisiting my progress next year.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

And also, the Outback Bowl. Go Cocks! ↩︎
I joke that I’m a grouchy old guy that doesn’t “get” Snapchat. The truth is that very few of my friends are on Snapchat and so it really isn’t that useful to me. If I had a bunch of friends active on Snapchat, I’d be there. Even if the interface is crap. ↩︎
I tried out Nuzzel based on Jason Snell’s recommendation on one of his many podcasts. ↩︎
Owned by Facebook. Sigh. ↩︎

Nov 9, 2016 ∞

Twitterless

What would happen if Twitter disappeared tomorrow?

This post was originally posted on November 9, 2016 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

A white Twitter bird on a green striped background

I’ve been on Twitter since 2007. It’s part of my daily routine and probably my most vital social media channel for finding and sharing news. But Twitter has had some lingering financial issues and when they recently tried to sell the company, no one stepped up to make an appropriate offer.¹

Also, a couple of social media experiments have crashed and burned lately. Twitter announced that they were closing Vine.² Talkshow had a bunch of potential but didn’t make it six months. And while Twitter is much larger, it’s not immune from financial reality.

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? How would that change the way I get things done?

I’d lose a bunch of contacts. I follow a large number of designers, brands and local experts on Twitter — and no where else. If Twitter disappeared, I’d lose all those contacts and have to try and reconstruct the network on another channel. Not an easy task.

I’d change how I watch live events. During the World Series, I kept an eye on Twitter. During the presidential debates, I followed along on Twitter. During the University of South Carolina’s football game last weekend, I kept up with the score on Twitter. During election night coverage, sigh. Twitter is the perfect companion to a live event and I’d miss seeing what my friends and family think in real time.

I’d have to rethink how I find articles and stories. I find lots of inspirational links and content on Twitter. If Twitter goes away, I’m using RSS and Feedly much more aggressively.

I’d have to rethink how I share content. I share most of my blog posts through Twitter. If Twitter were gone, I’d have to share them somewhere else like Facebook or Medium.

I’d change the way I use Facebook. I use Facebook for family pictures and connecting with people I know and have met. If Twitter disappeared, I’d probably use Facebook more to connect with a wider audience. Maybe I’d invest more time into building the Sketchbook B page on Facebook. Post more links to articles on my Facebook feed. If Twitter goes away, my Facebook experience changes radically.

I’d spend more time on Instagram. Because I love Instagram, almost as much as I love Twitter. And I’m going to have some free time if there is no Twitter.

I’d try to find a replacement. If Twitter disappeared, I imagine several companies would rush to unveil a replacement. Or modify their social product to attract Twitter refugees. You know Google would retool and rebrand Google Plus, Linked In might try to be less of a train wreck. Even Snapchat might try to appeal to former Twitter users. Startups would start, and fail. Someone would try to resurrect App.net. I’d try them all, but I’m not sure there can truly be a replacement for Twitter.

But… reality.

So I don’t think Twitter will just shut down. At some point, the price to purchase the company gets so low, that someone will take a chance on them. I’m more concerned that Twitter, or a company that buys Twitter, will change it so completely, that it becomes useless.

This exercise had forced me, though, to start evaluating areas where I am too reliant on Twitter. I’m going to start connecting to designers and thought leaders on other channels. I’m looking for new avenues to find and share content. I’ll evaluate how I use channels like Facebook, Instagram, Dribbble, YouTube and Medium.

Twitter might not disappear, but it’s still best not to keep your eggs in one basket.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

This was compounded by the fact that few established companies — like Disney — wanted to take on Twitter while abusive rhetoric is rampant. Let’s face it, Twitter has been a dumpster fire during this election season. ↩︎
Although maybe Vine is getting a reprieve. ↩︎

Nov 12, 2009 ∞

Soup, Spoons and Social Media

This post was originally posted on November 12, 2009 on Sketchbook B. It’s reposted here as part of a project to move some of my favorite writing to my new site.

I went to Subway last week. I don’t typically eat at Subway, but there is one by my office and I didn’t have much time for lunch. As I walked in, on the door, there was a window cling encouraging me to order soup with a combo. When I got in line, I looked up and there on the menu was an ad encouraging me to order soup. At the register there was another sign.

So I ordered soup.

I grabbed a seat. And realized I didn’t have a spoon. I looked up by the straws and napkins. There were forks and knives, but no spoons. So I asked the woman behind the counter – the same woman who sold me the soup – if they had any spoons. After asking another employee, she confirmed that they had no spoons in the restaurant.

The big picture

It seems both silly and odd that a franchisee would go to all the trouble of putting up all the signs and ads and then mess up something as simple as having spoons.

But I think this type of thing is very common in business. Often, we see people obsess over seemingly insignificant details, only to completely overlook a major issue. They work on the details and lose sight of the big picture.

As designers, we see this a lot.

Clients spend time and energy critiquing minor elements of a design, but often forget to shore up the logistical issues that support a campaign. Marketing and design are critical, but so is customer service and support. Think about my Subway story for a second. The marketing worked. I entered the store. And I purchased soup. However because of a minor – but critical – oversight, I was a dissatisfied customer.

Right now, social media is all the rage. Everyone seems to be talking about how social media can help their business. Worrying that they’ll be left behind if they aren’t on Twitter or Facebook. Consultants are aggressively selling social media services.

But I fear many of these folks are losing sight of the big picture. Social media is a tactic. And yes, it can be an effective and powerful tactic. But as companies develop their social media plans, they cannot forget that it is just the beginning of the customer relationship. Strategically, you need to think through the entire customer experience. What are you going to do with your customers after you reach out to them through social media? How do you want to engage your customers on a continuing basis?

I’m not saying social media is bad or that it isn’t important. There are absolutely uses for social media in business and marketing. Just remember that the social media tactics are only the beginning. You and your company need to prepare for a long-term customer relationship.

Or in other words, when you decide to sell soup, make sure you are ready to provide spoons.

Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.

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A year ago, I decided to lessen my reliance on Twitter. Here’s my progress so far…

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