Less Uniform Social Media Experiences
In the MIT Technology Review, Mat Honan makes two points about changes in the world of social media with both Bluesky and Threads seeing massive growth in November accelerated by the election and people leaving Twitter. The era of everyone having a uniform social media experience is ending. And that’s good.
The first is that tech and politics are just entirely enmeshed at this point. That’s due to the extreme extent to which tech has captured culture and the economy. Everything is a tech story now, including and especially politics.
The second point is about what I see as a more long-term shift away from centralization. What’s more interesting to me than people fleeing a service because they don’t like its politics is the emergence of unique experiences and cultures across all three of these services, as well as other, smaller competitors.
I loved Twitter early on when it felt like everyone was building their own communities, and then it stopped feeling like that, and then it got worse and worse. For the most part, it seems like my better friends from Twitter went to Threads, but I can’t really figure out the vibe over there, which is annoying because I’m too old to make new friends. I’m on Bluesky and like it very much. One of the more helpful features is letting individual users create their own Starter Packs, so if you want to, for example follow a community of Carly Rae Jepsen fans, you can do that really easily because I made a starter pack for you.
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Subreddits are a great example of this. The smaller, niche subreddits all have their own culture and are generally pretty friendly. The bigger they get, especially the default subreddits, the more they descend into chaos.
Bluesky seems to be trending in the right direction and a worthwhile number of interesting peeps are starting to make their way there. An idea. A kottke.org members starter pack? Drop your handle in here and if we’ve got at least a dozen or so folks interested I’ll create it and share it out. Me, I’m @bobclewell.bsky.social
I’m game. @goreckis.co
Kim D.
@kim-dibby-dib-do.bsky.social
In!
@pdxphillio.bsky.social
@RatDee
@thatisneat.bsky.social
unlikelywords.bsky.social
Loving the feedback so far. I'm going to see if we get any more during the overnight, and then I'll make the list in the AM, US Eastern Time.
@kottke.org :)
@allen.bsky.social
@albiedamm.bsky.social
artmem.bsky.social
Here's the starter pack:
https://go.bsky.app/cbbUL4
Note - Bluesky is glitchy this morning, so if you don't see yourself on the list right now, it should appear eventually. I'll also keep checking back to make sure any new folks get added.
@bamstutz.bsky.social
@tmonkey718.bsky.social
Simineo.bsky.social
@kylenbrimstone.bsky.social
Bob, thanks for doing this. I posted a link on Bluesky; hopefully we can fill out the pack a bit more.
Thanks, Bob!
@trentseigfried.bsky.social
@pecoraro.org
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