The Internet After Social Media

Black Friday 2022

Facebook and twitter are dying...now what?

Hello again! I'm on the way to returning after some time off. I hope I can do more blog posts in 2023.

Because as you know, the two behemoths that have had a monopolistic stranglehold on the internet for the last decade or so, Facebook and twitter, are encountering...problems.

So of course we should start with twitter. You'll notice I spell twitter with a small 't', like reddit, because they are small sites that got inexplicably huge. 

...a fact that's hard to escape currently.

twitter's failures since transportation magnate Elon Musk bought it have been the most vividly spectacular. The "$8 blue check plan" and the impersonation invasion that inevitably resulted has led to major companies losing massive stock value. Can you say "lawsuit", kids?! Thus, also predictably, advertisers - you know, the people who financially support twitter - are running for the exits. 

Things are pretty bad around corporate HQ as well: 75% of staff have either quit or been fired - 3 out of 4 employees! And Elon's churlish, arrogant behavior hints that they will not be missed. I tried to find the tweet where he gloats about his laid off former employees being "a valuable asset to some other company", but strangely, it's gone! Hmmm...

And the remaining workers (overwhelmingly H1-B Visa holders who can't just walk away) are frantically running around with their pants on their heads wondering who turned the lights out. My favorite anecdote: all badges were disabled, trapping workers trying to go home in a garage until security could break the doors open. Whoops!

One sign your end users think your app is a hot mess: when even polite middle of the road personalities such as Nigella Lawson post an exit strategy.  

Going to...

...where? Instagram? After all, while all this has been going on, Meta's difficulties have been less entertaining, but no less fatal.

Facebook's popularity with anyone who isn't your elderly relatives has been crashing for a while. Since, well, 2020, actually. Or maybe 2016.

So Mark Zuckerberg hedged his bets by buying super-sexy photo app Instagram, and then launching a widely ridiculed VR app. I think this sums it up perfectly:  

Source

Neither of which have slowed the quick decline of his personal worth - the Forbes' Billionaires List Top 10 mainstay now barely commands a place on the Top 30 - nor the worth of Meta, Inc., which is no longer a trillion dollar company.

And the wide acceptance that the pandemic is over - not to mention that it took so long to end it due to, well, misinformation about Covid-19 on social media - is eroding people's willingness to spend time on either site. Add to it widespread reports of the severe impact social media has on mental health, particularly among young people, and, well...

The so-called public squares of the internet are emptying out. And there's no indicators that they will be missed.

So where is everyone going now?

Back to blogs? If you have the energy to make one, sure. But effective blog rings don't exist (anymore) and Google's search can be unhelpful if you're not a master at SEO strategies.

Back to vBulletin sites? Because that is what Mastodon reminds me of - yet another social media move to eat a vital organ that the internet thrives on. 

ETA December: Well after I predicted that Mastodon would eventually turn out to be just like twitter, I'm now able to preview it at mas.to .... and guess what? All the people who magically appeared without invitations on my twitter feed are magically dominating the Mastodon timeline. Who could have foreseen this?!?!?!

I have a list of vBulletin sites for any of my main interests that I visit sometimes. Don't you? I hope so.

...but you think social media moderation is terrible - as someone who remembers back when blocking wasn't a thing, I can only warn you of the horrors that await you when you simply google your way through the rabbit holes of the internet into it's deepest, darkest corners...

reddit?!?! Which I'm trying - it's sometimes interesting and useful, and less of a free for all than you've been told it would be. So...I guess so?

Sigh. I love the internet's use as a tool - it's why I have a job, after all. And going back to school has been transformed by the online experience - if I could have done this back in the day, I'd have done much better!

But as a networking tool, it is in slow decline. Even Meetup is a useless pile of get-rich-quick seminars and pointless trivia anymore. 

Let's go back, I say. To blogs and handmade personal sites and niche sites where you can find your people.

The robber barons have the main square. So let's leave town for a while.

BTW 

While I'm creating this blog, I also still post on Quora, especially now that we are paid to do it. Should I make a Substack and eMail these to you when I write a post? Let me know below!