CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!

X is dead; long live Twitter

(8 posts)

  1. bakky
    Member

    Bringing together a few thoughts on this after we got into it in another thread; Twitter is dead.

    (Organisations will be slower to react to this; but the people are gone).

    On the morning of Friday 23rd, Pedal on Parliament chucked a save the date posting out all over various social media channels, including X.

    At the time of posting, PoP had:

    6,101 followers on X

    0 followers on Bluesky

    0 followers on Mastodon

    1,404 followers on Instagram

    683 followers on Facebook (page)

    1,351 members on Facebook (group)

    By 4pm on the 26th (today), here is a summary of all the post interactions on X vs. Bluesky:


    Bluesky: 38 reposts, 5 quote posts, 35 likes


    X: 1 like. 1 repost. They were both by the same person.

    Over the weekend, after the impact of the posts and general grapevine, the follower counts have changed as follows:

    6,101 followers on X (=)

    67 followers on Bluesky (+67)*

    3 followers on Mastodon (+3)**

    1,417 followers on Instagram (+13)

    682 followers on Facebook (page) (-1)

    1,361 members on Facebook (group) (+10)

    * New followers on Bluesky can be attributed to activity undertaken to follow known cyclists, mutuals with other orgs and starter packs like Blackford Safe Routes & SW20's lists to follow

    ** Mastodon is not a 'full account' presence but a federated bridge that mirrors profile changes and posts from Bluesky

    In Summary:

    X/Twitter's mindshare is only continued by the presence of organisations and services there who have not had the training, tools nor policy implementation to migrate them elsewhere. The people - at least as far as 'oor bubble' goes - have left it.

    (This is not a particularly academic example but I think it's both interesting and instructive).

    Posted 3 days ago #

  2. chdot
    Admin

    Interesting/useful

    After 16 years on Twit there are Cycling Edinburgh
    @CyclingEdin there are nearly 9000 followers

    I stopped posting a while ago

    I *intend* to have a CCE presence on BSky, but don’t expect to get that level of ‘interest’.

    Quality not quantity!

    Posted 3 days ago #

  3. bakky
    Member

    I think it's especially interesting as starting at 0 followers, all of that engagement is 'network effect' from reposts i.e. other accounts.

    I did not, however, expect it to be as stark as that with the minimal engagement on X. Like all large X followings, it will be a mix of bot following, people who have left social media altogether, and followers who just don't use X anymore specifically. Hard thing to let go of that kind of audience - but much easier if they're all ghosts.

    Posted 3 days ago #

  4. Morningsider
    Member

    @bakky - What did you do to annoy that one person on Facebook!

    Posted 3 days ago #

  5. bakky
    Member

    @Morningsider I assume that was the old "eugh, that old page, why am I still following that" type of Facebook interaction!

    Posted 3 days ago #

  6. Baldcyclist
    Member

    Confess, I'm not anything now. X seemed pointless after the mad man bought it, tried threads for a while, and haven't tried any of the other platforms. I am Facebook for family reasons, but don't really engage there either now.

    Isn't it Instagram where it's all at now? (I'm not there either)

    So the only reason I know about PoP is the post here.

    Posted 2 days ago #

  7. bakky
    Member

    From a personal standpoint, I’m not on Threads as any platform Meta gets their hands on is ultimately doomed - never mind one they started to try and compete with X. I reluctantly still have Facebook as it’s where the Groups are - e.g. Urban Arrow Owners forum - and also where a lot of news from certain small active travel orgs is found.

    Instagram I continue to use for similar reasons - to reach people - but it’s morphed into such an attention-farming dopamine IV that I find myself having to cut down on it very intentionally. The more it’s pivoted to video and ‘content’, the more buried the stuff from friends you follow becomes, and the more of the original soul of the thing is lost. But there’s a lot of people for whom that is their main social media platform having given up on Facebook, and never having been interested in ‘microblogs’ like X or its ilk.

    I’m very bullish on Bluesky, because it’s a do-over by the folks who invented Twitter originally, and started out with two key aspects - domain names are king (to be ‘verified’ as an org, your web address becomes your handle e.g @spokes.org.uk, @edi.bike, @pedalonparliament.org) and that’s a bet on the open web; and secondly while Bluesky.social (bsky.social) is the instance everyone currently uses, they’ve actually made it run on an open source protocol (‘ATProto’) meaning that it is and can be decentralised. This prevents any strange little rocket boys coming along with their billions and buying it up, it can’t be had.

    Couple that with decentralised tools for blocking, muting and curating content - built right in - and you have the ingredients for Twitter without the trolling, by and large.

    I’d be more bullish on Mastodon but even as a nerd, the way they set up the federated / decentralised aspect is a bit of a headache and it’s not been quite as simple to move to or pick up for normal humans. It works, I have accounts there, but it’s Bluesky that has captured the early Twitter vibe and reached the critical mass of users. We just need the organisations and authorities to recognise that it’s the safest ship to jump to from X.

    Posted 2 days ago #

  8. neddie
    Member

    I second what bakky says about Bluesky, and to add that there are no adverts on it!

    Posted 2 days ago #

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