Posts in "Social"

Thinking about social media… the good and the bad.

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....

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Twitterless: The Final Chapter

I’ve been preparing for Twitter’s demise for seven years, but I didn’t see ‘X’ coming.

Twitter bird with Xs in the eyes.

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...

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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.

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. Continue Reading →

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...

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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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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,...

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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.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...

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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...

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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...

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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,...

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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...

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