So, you Wanna change Social Media Part 2
A look back a year or so later...
Last year around this time, I looked at three social media sites: Twitter (X), Blue Sky (or is it Bluesky? I’ve yet to figure out the difference), and Mastodon. We looked at what each one was about, some of what makes it unique, the pros and cons of moving there, and whether was it worth looking into further. I thought given everything happening, it might be worth looking at these three again and adding a fourth to the set this time.
So if you are wondering what I wrote last time, follow this link here it’ll bring you up to speed.
Also, and this is a free plug for them Alex over at Reconnect posted a much better summary of the state of social media and how you should and could use it. Please take the time to read their post, as it is well done.
So we’ll take a look at our same three, use my article above to see what we said last time.
I will add my links to my socials if you are on there and wanna follow me at those locations. Feel free everyone is welcome.
1. Twitter (X)
What has changed in the last year?
Well, let’s see how things are over at the formerly known as Twitter.
Well um, that is...what the hell happened here? Oh, right Elon happened…
Since taking over Twitter Elon Musk has seemed to go out of his way to establish Twitter (sorry I refuse to use the X branding) as one of the larger cesspools of our society, you know you have to give the guy some credit. He took a shitty place and managed to somehow though sheer willpower made it worse. With the slow monetization, the explosion of bots and grift on the site seem to follow right behind. You cannot scroll on the page without seeing an ad, so bad is it that you don’t even realize half the time you just are looking at a lot of ads.
Along with this, Musk has managed to do something Trump could not do with his social media site: make a right-wing social media machine. I know there are people there who are holding the line and trying to inform people. The problem is I feel we’ve reached echo chamber territory. Trying to change minds on the site is nigh impossible along with even having a good discourse about topics. Along with that, the recent TOS updates to allow AI to access users’ tweets have sounded a claxon for much of the internet. I stopped posting there a bit ago and recently suspended service on the MNR Twitter as the people I would reach there, to be honest, are not people I want to check out my stuff. If there are even people there as I am sure 90% of the people who followed me there in the last few months have just been bots.
That all being said, much like I said last time, I feel a lot of people are angry and truly want to leave the site, but they won’t do it for fear of losing the people who are there. So, they’ll be back in due course after whatever drama they found has died down.
2. Blue Sky
Blue Sky has been making headway in the last year, especially since it has left its beta stage and moved into its teen years, wanting to be introduced to everyone as the next big thing. To be honest, it may get there, too…
Blue Sky was slowly working off of the FOMO theory, sending out invite codes to people, and also letting them disperse them to other people they knew thus a slowly controlled release until it decided to go full-on public. I got into Blue Sky that way, and to be perfectly honest I see it as a marketing tool. I don’t see it as a place I want to be at exactly.
A lot of the turn-off for me to Twitter before all the Elon shenanigans was the feeling of superiority a lot of people on there seem to have. I mean yeah it’s cool if a celeb tagged you and you got viral for about two minutes, but beyond that, it always felt like Twitter was a transaction between you and the company. You get to go and do your thing, and they would take your information and well, do algorithm things to make money. Now at least for now, Blue Sky makes money via seeding and also plans to (or as of now has, I cannot find any information to confirm this) offer a paid version with a domain and possibly other perks for a fee. This is not too different from what Mastodon has done. The thing is though, the people who I felt added to that sense of smugness, they have moved to this platform.
You’ll see celebs and influencers abound here, is that a bad thing? No, honestly it isn’t and everyone has a right to do what they want and if they have something to share or sell be allowed to do it. I am merely going from a vibe standpoint and just saying that isn’t something I actively want to be a part of. We’ll be posting more there on my own and MNR accounts. Though I have no idea how much we’ll be sharing there exactly. I think it is safe to say however if there is a true alternative to Twitter, Blue Sky has made its case and people seem to be listening.
3. Mastodon
Of the three I covered, Mastodon is my favorite and I will own that, I generally liked the vibe of the place, I’ve seen growth and met some very cool people, and seem to of found a niche that I want to grow my little community of odd people there. It is very much still the outsider of the three, but I also like not having myself hammered with Ads at every turn, and also the server I am on is the main one and seems to always have interesting posts and topics going on. If we were to classify the three sites, Mastodon would be the DIY/Punk rock kids, Blue Sky would be pop and Twitter would have entered its Roger Waters late career stage. Also probably changing the theme to its biggest work to more align with their opinions and thoughts as time has moved on.
I don’t feel pressure to post interesting stuff on Mastodon, which makes the stuff come more organic. Maybe even perhaps as a result more interesting for people to check out. I have over time become a big fan of the concept of the federated universe, and yes Blue Sky is federated adjacent, and decentralized. It’s chill vibes and odd people at this place. For that alone, I use this as my preferred social media to you know, be social.
Well, it’s not just really one challenger, in some ways it is two…
We have two new social media places to throw in here, one for writers and one for artists, though to be fair a lot of them probably intertwine more than you may think.
Notes (A Substack project):
Look if you are here, you probably know what notes are, if not please use this theme song from a 1980s show as a summary…
So it is, writers, writers social media to me, and look a lot of us are using it mainly as promotion and not as a social media thing. That’s okay, since some of us are just doing blogs why not? Though while we use it for promotion, I have to say the bots here are a lot more intense than I expected, you will find posts as of late like “subscriber to me and I’ll subscribe to you.” Which sounds nice, until you realize they are probably not reading. I have no issue if you just follow me here, but if you subscribe I hope you you know read the things I put effort into instead of my lazy promotion tactics.
But, despite all my complaining, I will concede it is also a great little networking tool and I’ve found some cool stacks here to follow. The jury is still out if it is gonna be able to crack into the top three of socials, and I don’t think it will given the state of things right now, in a year though well…we could be having a different conversation.
Cara
Cara is another newer social media that caters to the arts, they are just starting and when Instagram decided to do stupid things a lot of people started to migrate over, my wife included. MNR has a page there but it is mainly to promote/share my photos from Figure it Outposts, and other things. It is growing and also perhaps it is growing too fast. Once people migrated over the owner was a bit surprised as they explained in a post that the expansion plans were speeding up and the funds were not as a result of server use. People are still posting there and well aside from NSFW stuff the world is rather your oyster. Though we’ve seen via “The Dominant Ones” promos you can get away a lot with implied stuff.
So that is the state of our world of social media right now, I am surprised how fast Twitter crashed and burned, but that is due to the ignorance of the owner. Blue Sky is becoming slowly Twitter 2, but it will not be the one-stop shop we all remember the OG to be. Mastodon meanwhile keeps doing Mastodon things and does not seem to care what is happening. Our new challengers are probably also not going to make any headway. Though I feel with those two there is some good news overall.
That would mean we are not gonna have a one-stop shop anymore, that is a good thing as we should not have one as it dilutes what makes the internet special, we should all be interacting with one another of course. But one-stop shops have proven that voices get co-opted or turned into marketing gimmicks. Viral moments feel more staged and there is a general fake feeling to things. Authenticity goes a long way, and maybe with this schism of social media, we will claim that back.
Or we’re just going to have more places to post pictures of our cats…and show photos of our food…WHY ARE WE STILL DOING THAT?
-Brandon
Thanks for the shoutout and they very thorough walkthrough of socials. I wasn’t aquatinted with Cara. Will check it out.