I thought about this recently with Instagram, when I got linked there as the ‘official’ information page for an event. I could see the post with the general information, but couldn’t read the comments to see if any more information or clarifications had been posted.
That was an event, where the organizers obviously wanted as many people as possible to show up, and Instagram was doing them a disservice in that. I wasn’t going to sign up to Instagram to view those comments. And my parents couldn’t sign up to Instagram. It’s too complex for them.
Twitter has been gone for the non-Nitter using general public for a while. So, at this point, if you’re not a techy, where can you still publicly post information? TikTok, I think? YouTube, I guess. Mastodon would be an option, but it’s verging on being too unknown for non-techies, as does BlueSky.
We’ve gone from a time where everyone and their mother could publicly announce things on the internet, to a pretty big vacuum.
It’s going to be interesting what fills this space. Theoretically, even personal webpages might have a bit of a comeback.
So, at this point, if you’re not a techy, where can you still publicly post information? TikTok, I think?
TikTok or any such other crap is not publicly.
It takes like, $0 and a cup of coffee at most to start a simple page in neocities for a simple announcement. Heck, in the absolutely simplest cases available you can literally upload your own announcement (a picture, a PDF or smth) to ufile.io and just pass around the link to that.
I don’t see the problem with mastodon, people without accounts can’t reply, but it can still be used as a message board. It’s not much different from linking to a wordpress blog.
Most things haven’t moved over there from xitter. So if I want to follow an author, a band, an event, or even a theatre or other venue, I have to rely on bot accounts reposting from xitter, which assumes that I even know how to do that. It isn’t something my mom will do without instructions, and even then it’s not something she’s likely to check or keep up with because it is not as intuitive.
The place does not have the followers to convince entities like I mentioned above to move there or upkeep accounts there. The TLA isn’t out there posting bookings and upcoming events/cancellations on Mastadon.
If you’re a customer, sure. But if you’re a seller, it’s about as handy for the basic “I need some form of web presence but don’t wanna make and upkeep a website” use case, which facebook, instagram and twitter are increasingly failing at.
So, honestly these businesses go where the people are and Mastadon also doesn’t have the userbase of xitter.or Facebook even in their decline. My kids school doesn’t update delayed openings on Mastadon. Because most kids, and a whole lot of adults aren’t on there.
Businesses weren’t advertising on Facebook when it was “theFacebook.com”. It took a while to gain a userbase that was beneficial to businesses and entities to post there and maintain accounts.
Honestly, let’s bring geocities back (not exactly in that form). Anything that isn’t a throwaway post on social media goes there, and you can post links to it from all the social platforms for reaching a broader audience. Then there’s a place for getting the most up to date information about an event, that doesn’t require making an account, and the person putting the event on doesn’t have to make sure posts across multiple platforms are updated with the same new information.
I thought about this recently with Instagram, when I got linked there as the ‘official’ information page for an event. I could see the post with the general information, but couldn’t read the comments to see if any more information or clarifications had been posted.
That was an event, where the organizers obviously wanted as many people as possible to show up, and Instagram was doing them a disservice in that. I wasn’t going to sign up to Instagram to view those comments. And my parents couldn’t sign up to Instagram. It’s too complex for them.
Twitter has been gone for the non-Nitter using general public for a while. So, at this point, if you’re not a techy, where can you still publicly post information? TikTok, I think? YouTube, I guess. Mastodon would be an option, but it’s verging on being too unknown for non-techies, as does BlueSky.
We’ve gone from a time where everyone and their mother could publicly announce things on the internet, to a pretty big vacuum.
It’s going to be interesting what fills this space. Theoretically, even personal webpages might have a bit of a comeback.
As a public, we’ve gone back to the days when the internet was a techies platform.
The difference now is it’s a techies platform Vs. a corporate platform.
The more convenient FOSS social media is, the less techie it will be, and the closer we’ll get back to the more open internet for all.
Until then we have an open internet for techies alone.
TikTok or any such other crap is not publicly.
It takes like, $0 and a cup of coffee at most to start a simple page in neocities for a simple announcement. Heck, in the absolutely simplest cases available you can literally upload your own announcement (a picture, a PDF or smth) to ufile.io and just pass around the link to that.
I don’t see the problem with mastodon, people without accounts can’t reply, but it can still be used as a message board. It’s not much different from linking to a wordpress blog.
Most things haven’t moved over there from xitter. So if I want to follow an author, a band, an event, or even a theatre or other venue, I have to rely on bot accounts reposting from xitter, which assumes that I even know how to do that. It isn’t something my mom will do without instructions, and even then it’s not something she’s likely to check or keep up with because it is not as intuitive.
The place does not have the followers to convince entities like I mentioned above to move there or upkeep accounts there. The TLA isn’t out there posting bookings and upcoming events/cancellations on Mastadon.
If you’re a customer, sure. But if you’re a seller, it’s about as handy for the basic “I need some form of web presence but don’t wanna make and upkeep a website” use case, which facebook, instagram and twitter are increasingly failing at.
So, honestly these businesses go where the people are and Mastadon also doesn’t have the userbase of xitter.or Facebook even in their decline. My kids school doesn’t update delayed openings on Mastadon. Because most kids, and a whole lot of adults aren’t on there.
Businesses weren’t advertising on Facebook when it was “theFacebook.com”. It took a while to gain a userbase that was beneficial to businesses and entities to post there and maintain accounts.
They don’t have to stop posting there. They can do both.
Honestly, let’s bring geocities back (not exactly in that form). Anything that isn’t a throwaway post on social media goes there, and you can post links to it from all the social platforms for reaching a broader audience. Then there’s a place for getting the most up to date information about an event, that doesn’t require making an account, and the person putting the event on doesn’t have to make sure posts across multiple platforms are updated with the same new information.
There’s Neocities: https://neocities.org/
Pair it with an own domain name and it’s a perfectly valid personal homepage.