social media

What I liked most about Twitter was following people whose work I enjoyed and discovering new blogs, art, and websites. Twitter was also a good way to broadcast what I was doing on other platforms (writing blog posts, making art). And it was easy for my followers to retweet so additional people might come across my work, too.

But in the last few years, Twitter has become less and less useful for that. The feed became more toxic. It’s more difficult to follow topics you want to see, separate from the negativity that overwhelms a lot of Twitter.

I deleted Twitter from my phone in February 2022, and I do not miss it. But I do miss the ability to discover new things and broadcast my work. No other social media platform operates quite like Twitter did for these functions.

Instagram doesn’t have easy sharing capabilities in the feed

On Instagram, you can share links and other people’s posts to your story. But you can’t create clickable links in the caption of a post. You can’t share someone else’s post to your feed natively. (You can do it with a third-party app or by screenshotting the original post.) It’s not as easy to share other people’s posts on Instagram as it is on Twitter.

Hashtags were more useful on Twitter. Recently, Instagram removed “recent posts” from search results. You can’t use hashtags to find new posts with a hashtag you’re interested in anymore. You can see “top posts” and “recent top posts” only. These changes on Instagram make it more difficult to discover new things.

Tumblr isn’t as mainstream as other platforms

On Tumblr, you can easily share other people’s posts. Hashtags operate the way they do on Twitter. But Tumblr is not as mainstream as other social media platforms. For example, Facebook had 2.4 billion active monthly users in 2019. Tumblr had 371 million monthly visits.

Almost everyone I know is on Facebook or Instagram (or both). I hardly know anyone personally who uses Tumblr.

Other options?

I’m not on Mastodon or Bluesky. These look similar to Twitter, but, at least for now, they aren’t mainstream. Mastodon and Bluesky are not good options for discovery and broadcast when their userbases are small.

Vero is an interesting option, but again, seems like the userbase is small.

Newsletters are not social media, but they seem like a good option for broadcast and discovery. My issue here is, ease of sharing. Sure, you can forward an email to a friend. But how many people do you know who do that with newsletters? I read a lot of newsletters. When I find something that would interest a friend, I’m more likely to send the friend one link from the newsletter, instead of the whole newsletter.

I read this newsletter from Henrik Karlsson about blog posts being a way to connect with people who share your interests. I agree with what he’s saying but what he’s talking about is a long game of connecting with people. What I want from social media sharing is faster and more casual.

What am I looking for?

So what do I want from social media when it comes to broadcast and discovery? The short answer is, Twitter circa 2014. The longer answer is a list of characteristics:

• Short-form posts that are easy to skim through
• Clickable links
• Ability to share other people’s post to your feed
• Clickable hashtags that show you recent posts that used that hashtag
• Chronological feed
• Mainstream use / a broad userbase
• No log-in needed to view content
• Desktop and mobile interfaces

Is this too much to ask for in 2023? Are we doomed to algorithms and closed-off platforms?

Or maybe there is a social media platform like this out there that I haven’t heard of? If there is, please let me know.

I see lots of conversations about quitting social media and all the negative effects of using social media. I don’t disagree. Yes, the platforms were built to be addictive. Yes, they spread misinformation. Yes, they manipulate people’s emotions.

But social media also offers a way to connect with people and build communities that we didn’t have before.

What’s missing from those conversations about quitting social media is, what comes next?

How do you keep the positives of connecting and building community and leave behind the negative aspects of social media?

I haven’t seen many people talking about that. (If you have, please send me links.)

One solution might be, people take back their online identities. Build their own site and that’s their home on the internet, along the lines of IndieWeb principles.

But lots of people don’t want to (or don’t care to) build their own website. It’s a lot of effort, compared to posting on Instagram.

We need easy-to-use tools that help people create their home on the internet.

Tools that:

• don’t require a lot of technical skills
• are low-cost (or better yet, open-source and free)
• break down barriers to having your own site

As long as social media platforms are the simplest way to post online, lots of people will keep using them. We need alternatives that are just as accessible as social media apps.

Is anyone building something like that?

I like using social media primarily to find and follow with people who have similar interests to me in creative hobbies (writing, drawing, zines) and genre-specific media (sci-fi and fantasy novels, TV shows, and movies).

I also browse social media for trending topics and news, but that’s a secondary purpose for me. More like a side effect.

It’s getting more difficult, though, to use social media to find and follow people who have similar interests to me. This is why:

1. Social media algorithms obstruct some content from people I follow.

Twitter and Tumblr let me see posts on my feed in reverse chronological order, but Instagram and Facebook do not. Right now, posts on my Instagram feed are in this order:

• 4 hours ago
• ad
• 6 hours ago
• 3 hours ago
• 7 hours ago
• 23 hours ago
• 5 hours ago
• ad
• 2 hours ago

Why is it like this? Because the algorithm shows you posts based on your behaviors: accounts you interact with most, people you are tagged in photos with, the types of posts you interact with (likes, comments), and even how frequently you open the Instagram app. But this also means if you don’t interact with some of the accounts you follow, you might not see some of their posts.

You can expand your own posts’ reach on Facebook and Instagram by playing along with the algorithm’s game (at least until the algorithm changes again), or you can pay to boost your posts. But the reality is, the everyday user isn’t going to have time or funds to do this. So we’re all at the mercy of the algorithm and advertising budgets for which posts we see and which posts our followers see in feeds.

2. The 24/7 news cycle spills over into social media and oversaturates it.

Updates about the pandemic, politics, and other social issues are important to see, but sharing and re-sharing these posts drowns out other topics. If one person I follow shares an update about the pandemic, I see that post once. But if twenty people I follow share the same update about the pandemic, I see that post up to twenty times. My feed gets oversaturated with redundant posts.

3. People’s social media feeds are their own content plus everything else they share.

Very few people use their social media profiles to share only original content they create. Profiles are a mix of original posts and re-shared content. You might follow a person for one topic (you both like talking about movies), but you see whatever other random posts they re-share, too. There’s no good workaround to see only original posts and not re-shared content.

So I’ve been spending more time reading blogs.

I’ve used Feedly on and off for years, ever since Google Reader was discontinued (RIP), but I’ve been spending more time in it recently. Feedly is the calmest way I have right now for reading stuff from people I follow.

When I go into Feedly, I see people’s blog posts, in chronological order, without re-shares and other noise in between posts. No random topics splintering my attention.

My favorite blogs to follow show how the writer does whatever it is they do. The author who talks about his writing process and where he goes for inspiration. The artist who shows her studio and works in-progress. Business people who talk about work culture. Blogs like that.

I’m looking for more blogs to follow, so if you have recommendations, please let me know in the comments or over on Twitter.