{"id":2083,"date":"2023-02-16T19:08:57","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T03:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mossor.org\/blog\/?p=2083"},"modified":"2023-02-16T19:09:03","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T03:09:03","slug":"write-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mossor.org\/blog\/write-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Write: Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have a Love\/Hate relationship with Social Media.  I\u2019m going to share a bit of my own history with Social Media and my problems with it over the years and recently.  You\u2019re not going to get any \u2018Hot Takes\u2019 nor are you likely to see anything here that you haven\u2019t seen before as I doubt I\u2019m going to say anything that hasn\u2019t been described more clearly and completely elsewhere, but this is, at least, my<\/em> experience with the phenomena that is Social Media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am calling it a phenomenon because the degree to which it has transformed some aspects of how we interact with each other and with culture, pop and otherwise is phenomenal.  This is funny because it\u2019s really only phenomenal if you view it from the perspective of a 57-year-old who has been watching and participating in technology for his entire life.  To my kids, it\u2019s table stakes or is, at least, omnipresent in their world from an early age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Facebook (2006 – Present)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Facebook is the first time I recall hearing about Social Media.  This goes back all the way to reading about an application that was unique to, at that time, a few colleges back around 2004 and 2005.  You can learn far more about it than I care to talk about from the movie The Social Network (2010)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recall hearing about how it moved from being available to college students only to where it became available to the public and I signed up, probably as soon as I could in 2006.  It was new, it was growing crazy fast and I, along with lots of adults, was curious to see what all the kids were up to.  (Quick check which can be applied to most forms of Social Media: By the time most adults know about or are involved with a given Social Media platform, most of the core audience, \u201cThe Youths\u201d have moved on to something else.  It\u2019s almost certainly not cool anymore.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was on Facebook for a long time because I saw it as a common platform to connect with family and friends who I didn\u2019t see or talk with regularly.  And it worked for that!  For a while.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few problems:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. I saw a lot from \u201cFriends\u201d who were not really friends, just people who I connected with from various points in my life, and much of what was going on there was not all that interesting because, let\u2019s face it, most of us don\u2019t have that interesting of lives.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. I learned more<\/em> than I wanted to about some folks, which was enough to tell me that I should almost certainly never<\/em> talk to that person about anything in any way challenging because it would almost certainly go poorly.  This typically included religion and politics.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3.  Facebook gave a forum for people whose opinion I was not interested in to shout that opinion to a wider audience and often that opinion was that I suspect they could and should have kept to themselves.  Basically, it gave the old man shaking his fist in his front yard at \u201cthose damn kids\u201d or whatever the ability to amplify their voice when, really, they should just keep all that inside their head.  Or alone on their porches.  Preferably their back porches.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. While I knew that Facebook was really in the business of selling our eyeballs – because they had to make money somehow, I got that, and a \u201cfree\u201d site is not really free – over time it became clear that things I wrote were not even being seen by half of my target audience, which was the folks who I actually was Friends with on the application.  In some tests that I ran, probably eight years ago now, I found that less than half of the people I was connected with were seeing my posts.  But, we all saw lots of other<\/em> posts from either individuals or organizations or ads that Facebook made us scroll through to see the stuff that I was actually there for.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    So, after my longest stint on any Social Media Platform, I broke up with Facebook<\/a> in January of 2014 and didn\u2019t look back.  I shut down my account and walked away.  The power dynamic had shifted way to far away from me and I was not getting enough out of the platform to justify my continued involvement.  That was over nine years ago, but based on math, I guess I was on there for something like eight years, probably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For comparison, today, roughly 71% of adult American\u2019s are on Facebook and this is with engagement and usage declining for many years now.  So, clearly, Facebook has managed to get along without me just fine!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    MySpace (2005 – 2008)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    To go back before going forward, MySpace is the first time I became aware of a Social Media platform that my kids were interested in.  MySpace was really popular back between 2005-2008 or so.  After that, it died off and became, according to one article, \u201can afterthought\u201d.  But, at the time I became aware of it because my kids were on it, collecting music, getting their computers infected with viruses and following people who I didn\u2019t know, never met and might not even be local to them.  MySpace was the first time I saw my kids editing code!  Because even back then, you could edit the HTML code to customize your own page.  I recall my daughter hacking her MySpace page.  Little did I know that more than 20 years later, she would pursue that as a career!  All she wanted to do at the time was change some colors and some other small things you could customize at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But, for all of that, it was pretty clear that it was Not For Us (the Parents, the Adults).  This kept it cool for a while, but ultimately meant it didn\u2019t cross over or break through the way Facebook did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Google+ (2011 – 2019)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Not long after Facebook blew up, Google took notice and decided they wanted some of that pie, so they focused the might of their giant space lasers at the problem and produced \u2026 Google+.  Which was, let\u2019s be fair, a pretty weak attempt at a Social Media Platform.  The main thing it had going for it was that it was from Google?  There was some integration with Google Photos and a few other things, but largely it was sort of the Nerd version of Facebook and, like many things that Google does, it put a ton of energy into it for a while, determined it wasn\u2019t going to pay for itself and then killed it off.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Snapchat (2011 – Present)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Snapchat is an example of a Social Media Platform that is Not For Me.  By which I mean I am very much not its target audience.  As someone outside that phenomenon, I will simply say Snapchat exists, so far as I can tell, as a way to share pictures (and videos).  What\u2019s unique is the ability to determine how long a given post lives.  Could be very short-term.  Theoretically, you can\u2019t make a copy of a Snapchat post, so it was a way to post photos that were protected to some degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Again: not the target audience.  That having been said, \u201cAs of the 3rd Quarter of 2022, Snapchat has 363 million daily active users. That is 18.6% increase Year over Year.<\/a>\u201d  Who knew?  Certainly not me.  I thought it was dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Instagram (2010 – Present)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Instagram originally existed to share photos.  You could follow folks and they could follow you and you could see their pics and vice versa.  Over time, they included the ability to post videos.  Then they were bought by Facebook in 2012.  Since then, Facebook inserts lots and lots of stuff over and above what and who you are following.  Often ads, but generally other content their algorithm has decided might be relevant but often is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I do have an account on Instagram.  I have also deleted it from my phone several times, irritated at the ratio of stuff I want to see versus the crap they make me scroll through.  I judge myself for staying on this platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But, I will say that this is an example of my shift in the role of Social Media for me.  I only participate as a consumer.  I don\u2019t produce stuff that is easily consumable or appealing to a large audience, so that ends up meaning that Social Media is a passive activity that I participate in primarily as a consumer when I\u2019m bored.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This app doesn\u2019t appear to be going anywhere any time soon.  It has over 2 billion active users monthly.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Reddit (2005 – Present)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Reddit is a site where people with some common theme can get together and talk about it or ask questions or debate it.  Or just share memes.  Could be video games or politics or religion or wrestling, all it takes is for someone to create a reddit (basically a group) and if enough people are interested, you will have both contributors and viewers to keep it alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I have to admit: This is one that doesn\u2019t really resonate with me.  I don\u2019t get it.  It doesn\u2019t grab me.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That having been said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Reddit key statistics<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n