When You Lose Your Social Media Manager (Or, Notes on SMMSs to Drown Your Tears In) — Updated (5/15/2023)
(See Update notes before the list!) Fun fact: when a major social media network is bought by a billionaire who has no idea how to manage a social media network, one of the predictable consequences is that said social media network might stop working as expected. And so here we are in May 2023 with Twitter’s new API changes rippling through the app and service industry like a tornado of stupidity. The consequences of all this? I’ve now spent hours upon hours researching social media managers. Why? The system I was using, SmarterQueue, cut off all support for Twitter two months before my annual subscription had ended. Additionally, the new API rules also scuttled moa.party, the crossposter I used to pull certain items from my Twitter feed to post to Mastodon. Like a lot of folks, I don’t really have the time to sit on social media apps posting. And like a lot of folks, I have things to “sell,” which means I don’t have much choice but to be on social media apps. In this case, I mostly “sell” a podcast, and in the corporate environment of podcasting, you can’t exist without a social media presence. And one person really can’t manage that much social media without a little help. For me, that help comes in the form of a social media manager.
4 Things Twitter Could Do to Make Blue Worth Paying For (But Probably Won’t)
Over the past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about why Twitter Blue has not been the success its new owner had hoped for. While subscription numbers are hard to assess, Endgadget reported that as late as mid-January, Blue had only 290,000 subscribers worldwide, which doesn’t come close to Musk’s demand that the company get half of its revenue from subscriptions. Using absurdly basic math, you’d need 15.6mil subscribers at an $8/mo average to meet half of Musk’s revenue expectation of $3bil. If you’re in podcast circles, you’ll sometimes hear that anywhere from 1 to 10% of your listeners will subscribe to a Patreon (in my case, it’s about 3.7%). For Twitter, the target is around 3.4% (depending on the number you use for active users), which should be achievable in a short time frame. And yet, all data suggests that this isn’t remotely the case. But why? What is keeping Twitter from reaching a subscription milestone? There are probably dozens of reasons, from violations of the trust thermocline, Doctorow’s enshittification theory, distrust in the ownership of the platform, the consumer conception of value as free things become paid things, and so on. Twitter, in other words, is a mess.
How to Make Twitter Suck Less
Twitter is one of those places that people hate and use at the same time. Millions upon millions of users log in every day to share photos and quick thoughts, talk to friends and random folks around the globe, and stream the feed looking for interesting articles, news, images, videos, and more to share. It’s both a brilliant platform and a nightmare zone full of trolls, angry mobs, bot farms, organized harassment campaigns, and plain old assholes. And then there’s the cycle of negativity that Twitter seems to produce, both in its algorithmic structure and in the culture of “all engagement is good engagement” that exists there. If you’ve ever logged into Twitter and thought “my mood has taken a nosedive” or lost hours of your life to doom scrolling, then you know what I’m talking about. As an avid Twitter user — it being my primary platform — I know exactly what it’s like to face some of these things. I’ve dealt with trolls, bots, a harassment campaign, and far too many assholes to list. By comparison to others — especially women and members of minority groups — I’ve had it easy, but that doesn’t mean the experience on Twitter hasn’t been destructive. Twitter tends to make us into worse people. But it doesn’t have to be that way…totally… There’s likely no way to make any social network problem free, but there are some things you can do to make Twitter a less sucky place. Here are seven of them:
On Forgiveness, Bad Behavior, and Block Policies
If the post-GamerGate years didn’t change the way I interact with people in SF/F and online, the past year certainly has. From the election of a serial asshole to the endless parade of turdmuffins on Twitter, the last year has made it clear that “business as usual” just won’t work for my sanity. In fact, more and more, I’m learning that a lot of folks I know have even less tolerance for all sorts of behavior we all might have put up with a few years ago. Ann Leckie, for example, has for a while used this basic policy for handling responses to her Tweets:
Shaun’s Rambles 015: Spoilers vs. Content Warnings
Don’t spoil me with your content warnings, they say! In this episode, I take a crack at the confusion between content warnings and spoilers. What is the difference? Why are content warnings important? What value do content warnings provide? Take a listen to hear my take! Let me know what you think about content warnings and spoilers in the comments below! https://media.blubrry.com/shaunsrambles/archive.org/download/ShaunsRamblesEpisode015SpoilersVsContentWarnings/ShaunsRamblesEpisode015–SpoilersVsContentWarnings.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS