Summary:

Social Media is messier than ever.

Do you have an old school air popcorn popper?

You know when you get down to the last couple dozen kernels and they scatter every which way when popped? That’s basically state of social media right now. I’ve started and revised this post so many times in the last few weeks because nearly every day has seen something dramatic.

tl;dr – don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

• Twitter continues to devolve
• Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) continue to go in circles copying features from each other and imitating other social platforms.
• And now TikTok is (at least temporarily) banned in the US.
• BlueSky is the lone shining star with solid product development and user safety.
• Time spent on social media has also been slowly dropping

BlueSky

A bright spot in all of this is BlueSky. It seems to have reached a critical threshold (and level of ethics) that business are starting to show up. While that may sound icky to us as users, it’s a good sign that the platform will continue to develop and improve. It’s somewhat similar to Old Twitter, but with some neat features such as

• Ability to create custom feeds
• Ability to self-authenticate (to a website/domain name)
• Blocks are far more effective

As a user, it’s at the “fun” stage of new social media sites. It’s stable enough, has a critical mass of people with varying interests, and new features continue to be released. Most folks are still friendly and nice – with some exceptions. But they don’t need to be followed. The other fantastic thing is there’s no algorithm pushing unwanted content in our feeds. That does make it a little harder for small companies to gain traction, but it’s possible, and easier now when it is still a cozy place.

Twitter

Twitter is just a complete mess for businesses. If you like nonstop toxicity, bots, little quality content, and subject to whims of an erratic owner, it may be for you. 😉

I’m still disappointed by this, when Twitter was good, it was really good. It was so helpful during fire season and other natural disasters. Fortunately there are now alternatives, like Watch Duty for wild fires.

Meta / Facebook / Instagram

Meta reversed many of its internal programs and softened safety policies for user content.

• It ended its DEI programs. This is bad for many reasons – diversity is good for all of us. The more all people are represented, the stronger the product and the more people will use it. That’s good for advertisers who want to reach more than just Uncle Bob.
• It ended its fact checking programs. They’re moving to a Community Notes model copied from Twitter. While there are some good things about that – showing why content are false, misleading, etc. can be helpful in combating misinformation. It’s only as good as people chosen to create those Notes. If it’s getting rid of DEI programs, the pool reviewing will likely become less diverse and less capable of providing quality oversight. This is bad for everyone.
• Along with this, Meta also relaxed many of its content rules, particularly those targeting minorities, ethnicity, and gender identity. It’s going to be ok to accuse (despite zero evidence) of certain groups causing Covid. It’s going to be ok to attack women’s rights – including those to just have a job. Even more alarming they removed the line regarding “[hateful online speech] may lead to offline violence”.
• Meta also added three new directors to its Board. Two have direct ties to the Trump administration.
• While thankfully scrapped (supposedly), for a short time Meta released AI user accounts. There was nothing good about this. It seemed solely for the purpose of driving up engagement resulting in higher advertising spend. The two account profiles I saw were… problematic at best. What’s worse, is the accounts couldn’t be blocked by real users – you were stuck with their comments on your posts. This was not an AI chatbot, it was an actual user account supposedly completely AI driven.

TikTok

What does the TikTok ban mean? Honestly more smoke and mirrors. It was banned for wrong reasons, and it’ll likely be reinstated for other wrong reasons. Time will tell on this one. (and in the time I went from draft to posting… TikTok is back on.

There is a real risk to consumer privacy, but I would have liked to have seen a bill that addresses that. Requiring specific data sharing compliance to be available to US markets is a far better solution than picking out companies one by one. This would lead to more transparency in the process, make it easier to enforce, and most importantly make enforcement consistent.

The US has an online literacy problem. Unfortunately, this also extends to most politicians. We are careless with our personal information, lazy with passwords. We don’t read or understand most privacy policies on websites and apps. The information people share on social media is the problem. THAT can be used by anyone to build profiles. Have we already forgotten about Cambridge Analytica?

Conclusion

What is a business to do? Review the points below annually regardless of the amount of turmoil in the news.

1. Review your social media efforts. Are they successful? Are you spending piles of time and money with no results? Could that effort be spent elsewhere with better results? Or a different approach to your current efforts?
2. Review your ethics standards. Are these companies consistent with your ethics?
3. Review your client profiles. Are they likely to be turned off by Meta and Twitter’s policy shifts?
4. It’s not necessary to be active on all the platforms, but I would at least claim a profile on the major platforms.
   1. No one will be able to impersonate you
   2. Post with a quick bio of your company, including website and other places to find your company.

I am biased here, but I still stand by building your email list. I think people will continue to spend less time on social media in the coming years especially if toxicity increases. Your email list is yours – you always have a way to contact your fans regardless of the rise and fall of social media sites. Your list may be smaller, but it’s more dedicated. Likes and follows are cheap, giving an email shows genuine interest.