In 2023 we assessed the social media landscape in January, wondering about a “Twexit” and then again in July when it seemed more folks might be “Finally Thread(s) up with Social Media.” With contributions from a group of Chefs, possibly the major takeaway from both is only one clear pattern in social media: Twitter was dominant for a long time, for individuals and for organizations, but a more diversified landscape has developed in the last two years. It isn’t clear, however, that there is or ever will be a single replacement for the way that Twitter served as a robust forum for information and exchange. Rather, a multiplicity of options have developed, principally Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky, with some strong interest in LinkedIn. In our July 2023 effort, several Chefs mentioned Post, which has already shut down.
Given the explosion of Bluesky over the last few weeks, it seemed a good time to reassess. It’s still a comparatively small site, with more than 15 million total users as of last week — though Threads announced they had added that many users in just the first half of November. Still, Bluesky clearly has juice, and a perception among academics and journalists that it may be a better alternative because of some of its structural features including the lack of an algorithm. The Guardian announced that it would no longer post on X/ the platform once known as Twitter, citing the conspiracy theories rife on the platform and algorithm jiggering around the US election and other political or politicized events; the outlet noted, importantly, that they could afford this state as “our business model does not rely on viral content tailored to the whims of the social media giants’ algorithms.” As of November 16, they are posting news stories from an account on Bluesky. And on point for this community, Digital Science has reported that they’re working on adding Bluesky to Altmetric.
The readers of The Scholarly Kitchen may offer something of a bellwether. For many years now, Twitter has been our leading social media source of referrals of readers. But over the last year, LinkedIn has started to catch up, and over the last 90 days, LinkedIn referrals surpassed those from Twitter, and are now bringing us 1.65 times as many readers. Bluesky remains far behind, but is catching up as well. Over the last 365 days, Twitter referred 14 times more readers to The Scholarly Kitchen than Bluesky. But in the last 30 days, that ratio has fallen to 6:1, and in the last week, it’s down to 4:1.
We wondered whether we would start to reflect any different attitudes or practices now. How are Chefs using social media differently, and what are they seeing as platforms of choice or opportunity? From our different perches, what can we learn about how scholarly communications organizations are using different platforms?
Rick Anderson:
I was going to say that my relationship with social media over the past ten years has been “interesting,” but upon reflection it has actually been quite boring – which may (or may not) in itself be interesting. I’ve been active on Facebook since 2009, and on Twitter for maybe the same length of time. I’m not on Instagram or TikTok. I have an ongoing music project, which I distribute on Bandcamp. I have a BlueSky account, which I think I’ve logged into two or three times since joining. My experience on Facebook has been almost entirely positive ever since I joined – it’s allowed me to reconnect with friends, colleagues, and far-flung family members and maintain contact with them in a way that has been a pure joy. Very, very occasionally I’ve experienced toxic interchanges on that platform; in 15 years, I have had to block exactly two people: one who was regularly posting nasty and disrespectful right-wing social/political commentary on my page, and another who was doing the same with left-wing commentary. But I don’t get my news from Facebook and honestly wouldn’t know how to turn it into a news source. For me it’s been entirely about connecting with friends and family, and for me it serves that purpose as well today as it did in 2009. My only real disappointment with Facebook is that I can no longer use it to share pictures of my grandchildren, since my kids (correctly, I think) are very concerned about having their children’s images out floating around on the public web. (If any Scholarly Kitchen readers would like to see pics of my grandkids, feel free to hit me up privately. You won’t be sorry.)
My relationship with Twitter has been a bit more fraught; on that platform I’ve experienced more nastiness, which I attribute primarily to the fact that it’s very easy to attack someone in 280 characters and quite difficult to defend oneself in 280 characters. That shapes not only the interactions I have with others, but also the interactions I witness third-hand, and never having found the Twitter environment a very inviting one I’ve spent very little time there. I use it mainly when I want to get the word out about something; I don’t use it when I want to start a discussion of a serious topic. As mentioned above, I have joined BlueSky but it does not yet seem to solve a problem for me.
Todd Carpenter:
I’ve been active on “the socials” for a very long time. I joined onto Twitter back in 2007, when it was a small, flaky forum that people didn’t really know what to do with. I started sharing what I thought of as public notes from what was going on. It grew into a lively discussion over time. I fondly recall a weekly forum on Twitter organized by Laura Dawson, #ISBNhour, where we would geek out and argue about ISBNs and ebooks. Sadly, those days have passed. Even before Musk’s acquisition, the forum had begun to descend into vitriol, trolling, and generally abusive behavior by many. The acquisition simply accelerated its demise (enshitification to use the term coined by Cory Doctorow). Even setting aside the bad behavior, it simply lost its value as people moved on. Views, traffic, and links from posts dropped significantly (not that this was why I started tweeting, but tracking ROI on marketing is important). Whether this was an exodus from the platform because of the toxic vibes, the diminished service, or the algorithmic prioritization of dreck (or all of the above), the experience just wasn’t working any more.
Last year, after testing the Mastodon system, I moved onto BlueSky, which is much like Twitter was in its earlier days. It’s not dominated by big names, who simply build on their already large megaphones. As an organization, NISO has moved off Twitter for the most part. LinkedIn has also grown as a social platform centered around business rapidly in the past year. Just in the past ten days, I’ve seen a rapid shift of old friends moving onto the platform. While the open protocols of mastodon are the foundation of the system, the power of BlueSky is in the UX, which mirrors in many ways the old Twitter experience. Because of the open platform, you can do much more with the service than one could do in Twitter’s later years, after they began locking down their user data in an attempt to become more profitable. At a minimum, there are no ads, there is no dreck, you can control the algorithms of what you see, and you have more control over things — or people — you don’t want to hear from. Because it’s an open platform, you also have far more control, even so far as moving to your own server, if you’d like, though that is why most people avoided Mastodon. Come follow me where the sky is blue: https://bsky.app/profile/9thprime.bsky.social
Lettie Conrad:
NOTE: These reflections are entirely my own experiences and are not intended to prescribe what social media tools our community should or shouldn’t use.
My personal and professional engagement with social media has changed a lot over the years. LinkedIn was the first social platform I joined, probably 20 years ago, and I continue to be a fan of both its utility and usability. I joined Twitter in maybe 2009 or 2010, mostly posting at conferences at first, but growing gradually over time. Twitter was so much fun in its heyday, connecting me with new ideas and feeding both my personal and professional appetites.
My social media diet changed drastically in the last four years, like many of us. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was starving for ways to connect with family, friends, and peers across any platform. I was in the midst of writing my doctoral dissertation and coping with all the various disruptions and distress. Twitter was my go-to network and found tremendous support, both with existing contacts and by making new friends almost daily. Then, I burnt out completely by late 2021 and had to unplug from everything for a few months. Twitter got too aggro. Instagram left me feeling inadequate. Mastodon was too confusing. Reddit felt creepy. TikTok just plain wore me out. I decided to only commit my thoughts and feelings to a social platform that I could both believe in and where I repeated greater reward than regress.
For a while, LinkedIn was my sole channel, as it has been a consistently reliable way to connect with my professional communities with zero toxic vibes. I joined Bluesky in 2022, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t have the motivation to figure out the filters. Today, I’m leveraging social media when and where it makes sense. I’m back to browsing Instagram a few times a week and continue to find joy in LinkedIn. I now avoid X at all costs, mainly because I do not want to swim in a sewer (and refuse to do anything that would help Elon Musk). Thanks to the Scholarly Kitchen, my Bluesky network has doubled in the last few weeks and I’m finding much the same friendly, hopeful vibe I remember from the early days of Twitter. I am hopeful for more Blueskies ahead!
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe:
As I wrote about previously, I continue to follow my practice of being engaged with all social media platforms of note. Though Bluesky is currently experiencing an influx of participants exiting Twitter, what I have noticed is that sharing resources and engagement on professional topics is migrating to LinkedIn. Now, this could be because Bluesky is still in the emergent stage and people have not yet settled in to use patterns; this remains to be seen. The starter packs, blocking, and list-making features all bode well for my ability to curate a feed of interesting and useful content. LinkedIn lacks the informality and conversational nature of Bluesky, and (at least in the free version that I use) the tools I like to use to make groups of people whose posts I most want to see. Nonetheless, the algorithm serves up a steady stream of interesting content and there is minimal vitriol, in part no doubt because of the career-related aspects of the site.
Alice Meadows:
I deactivated my personal Twitter account at the start of 2024 because I just couldn’t justify staying on a platform 1) that was increasingly pushing false information and other content that I hadn’t signed up for to my feed; 2) where engagement levels were dropping significantly and, in some cases at least, interactions were disrespectful or downright hostile; and 3) is owned by Elon Musk (enough said…). We also deactivated the MoreBrains account at the same time and for the same reasons. So both I and my organization have been on BlueSky for a year or so now and, while it’s been a slow start, it has been good to be on a platform where respectful discourse seems to be a priority — and where you’re not bombarded with either fake news or posts from accounts you don’t follow and don’t want to. And, following the election, engagement has started to increase significantly, which is a hopeful sign for the future. Because, to be honest, although I’d always prioritize quality over quantity of interactions, it’s been quite hard to keep plugging away on a platform where engagement is low. So I’m cautiously optimistic that BlueSky is — or will be — the new version on the old Twitter, and I’m probably going to put most of my professional effort (both personal and organizational) into increasing engagement there. But I also suspect that the golden age of social media mega-platforms may be coming to an end, and that there will be a lot more fragmentation going forward. Will that fragmentation push us all further into our own little bubbles? Maybe… Is that a good thing? Probably not, but at this point in history it might just save our — or my, anyway — sanity in the short term!
Charlie Rapple:
I’m aware of lots of colleagues in higher education advocating for leaving Twitter / X. And I understand, agree with, and/or respect a lot of the reasons why. What I don’t feel so comfortable with is the implication that everyone in academia should agree and act in unison rather than being entitled to come to their own conclusion. It feels like advocating for groupthink, rather than fostering inclusivity. Decreeing that everyone should adopt the same stance overlooks the diversity of opinions, needs, and experiences within our sector — essentially, it pushes for homogeneity where heterogeneity should thrive. A tool is only as good or bad as the way it’s used; any platform can be used in both constructive and destructive ways. Calls for boycotts, especially when wrapped in blanket judgments about what everyone “should” do, can be a form of signaling that risks alienating member of the very communities we’re trying to reach. Not everyone is privileged enough, e.g., secure enough in their career, to renounce a useful network to show adherence to an ideology they may not even agree with. While some may choose to exit certain platforms/communities, others may still be finding them useful places to connect, spark discussion, expand their reach, and — perhaps most importantly — broaden their insights. Personally I have been more intimidated by some of the discourse I’ve encountered on BlueSky than what I’ve encountered on Twitter. I still engage, because I enjoy getting out of my comfort zone and thinking about different points of view. But I have the privilege of feeling confident enough to do that.
David Crotty
Unplugging from social media (and most traditional media) after the last election has allowed some time for self reflection and a change in my information gathering strategies. In general, my goal is to greatly diminish my social media presence — I find it’s not great for my own mental health, and I feel that it’s doing bad things to our society as well. Social media largely exists to make us feel isolated and unhappy, at least that seems to be how it is designed to make money, through driving engagement (which is much greater for outrage than it is for satisfaction). I’m trying instead to concentrate more on direct social interactions, both with friends and family, as well as with professional colleagues.
While my social media activity has evolved over the years, my goal is to bring it back to serving solely as a venue for professional information gathering. Back in the day, I used to rely on an RSS feed of the latest publishing news stories and science blogs as my morning catch-up with what was going on in the community. Then the blogs died out and the RSS readers were discontinued, and I moved that activity over to Twitter. Over time I got sucked in and expanded my use, to the point of doomscrolling through the last presidential election and turning to the app as one would a similarly addictive cigarette during down moments. None of this made me any happier.
And so as I write this, I am awaiting the download of my Twitter history so I can be done with the platform for good. I’m over at Bluesky but am carefully tailoring my follows to largely represent my professional community. No cute animals or videos of bands that I love, that stuff is too alluring and entertaining. I want my social media to be, well, boring, at least so boring that I don’t feel a need to check it more than once or twice a day. We’ll see how it goes. LinkedIn has suddenly become more useful to me in this manner as well, and I’m finding way more engagement there when I write about our latest issue of The Brief than I do on Twitter or Bluesky.
As for the Scholarly Kitchen accounts, which I oversee, we’ll likely stay active everywhere. The accounts are largely passive, sending out a link for each new post here and retweeting/reskeeting mentions of Scholarly Kitchen posts by others. Followers to the Kitchen account on Bluesky have quadrupled in the last few weeks, although our current total of 894 pales in comparison to the 25,000 followers we have on Twitter (although to be fair, a significant number of our Twitter followers seem to be either kitchen appliance sales bots or single young models looking for companionship). For those interested in following any of our Chefs on Bluesky, you can find a Starter Pack here: https://go.bsky.app/6Q7pwT6
Karin Wulf
I still regret the demise of the community and experience I had on Twitter. Mostly I regret the loss of regularly learning there from people working fields in or adjacent or beyond my own. I still use social media for two things, mostly: to post about my research field and the humanities more broadly, and to read about both and also at least a concentric circle or two beyond, including in scholarly communications, especially archives, libraries, and digital collections. As so many have noted, Twitter of old was so terrific for being one central meeting ground for the issues and people and work I was most interested in. Now I maintain an account on Mastodon, where two friends and I started our own instance — the chief virtue being that it is not subject to the control of another entity. I am tepid at best with LinkedIn, though I always mean to be better at it. I post most regularly on Instagram, where I have an account dedicated to my research outtakes, Threads, where I mostly keep up with the Swiftie news, and Bluesky, which is all of a sudden much more like what Twitter once was. I especially appreciate aspects of the interface like the chronological feed, and some key tools for keeping that feed interesting and useful that Bluesky implemented. I like it enough that I used an app (BlueArk) to export my Twitter posts over, and am in the midst of deleting them all from X. And I feel like I’m really learning again, especially about new research, conferences, publications. I’m very glad to see a robust presence from university presses and some of the societies and journals I follow, for example. Still, I can’t imagine ever being solely dedicated to one place anymore. Even so, my kids tell me that my version of social media is about as contemporary as silent films. Given that I use it primarily for work or work adjacent purposes (yes, I sort of categorize my Taylor fandom that way too), maybe that’s appropriate.
Discussion
11 Thoughts on "Is it Over Now (Social Media Version)?"
Are we merely selling our souls to a different devil (LinkedIn being owned by Microsoft) as we move to some of the other platforms outside of Meta or Musk owned outlets?
My apologies for the pseudonym. I really need my job and can’t chance being identified making comments like this.
I don’t think it’s possible to interact with most forms of media (traditional or social or whatever) without running into a corporation or a billionaire. After the cowardice of The Washington Post (owner: Jeff Bezos) during the last election, I’m still looking for a decent daily newspaper that’s not owned by a billionaire or some huge media conglomerate (suggestions welcome). Mastodon seems to be the only alternative for social media, but I’ve found it to be entirely impenetrable. So to me the choice is either to disengage entirely or to find ways to tailor the experience so it provides what I want while avoiding the negative aspects as much as possible.
If looking for ‘looking for a decent daily newspaper’, I can report that a lot of people I know, including in the USA, seem to find both the BBC and The Guardian, from the UK, to be trustworthy and fairly balanced news sources, with plenty of global coverage. The Guardian still has a knee-jerk fealty to the UK’s Labour party, and a love of social intervention, but is otherwise reliable. Al Jazeera gives an interesting global perspective – perhaps a little strident on the Middle East, it otherwise has good international coverage. Others advocate using direct news agencies like AP and Reuters for their lack of comment or spin.
A similar piece has run in the The Times [of London] (NB billionaire owner) today, written by James Marriott (I enjoy his writing. He’s very articulate. This week he uses the word “pullulating”!).
https://www.thetimes.com/article/e53bc48c-eb7f-4cb0-8026-69dfee526f16?shareToken=d135f189365275fa9851da0dda219bc1
Given our post today I was amused (and a little chastened) by his line “There seems to be a widespread misapprehension that switching the website you use to air your banal political opinions makes you a veritable Rosa Parks of cyberspace.”
But more importantly he makes a good point about echo chambers actually being a good thing (I would have said otherwise) because being connected to *everybody* doesn’t broaden your opinions, it just makes you crosser with those you don’t agree with. Better to retreat into your tribe and hold more forgiving views of the other end of the spectrum, than to be faced with their heinousness on too regular a basis. Food for thought, for me.
I never really understood Twitter as a place for dialogue; to paraphrase Rick, you can lay yourself open to attack, due to the limitations of making a thoughtful point in 280 characters, the attack can easily be within that, and the 280-character rebuttal proves to be impossible (unless you have the gifts of Wendy’s or James Blunt, it seems).
But it seemed to work, for a while, as a place to briefly announce news or trivia to people who could consume information in that way.
I went dark on Twitter (personally and professionally) in 2022, partly due to Elon Musk’s personal support for toxicity on the platform, and partly as the signal-to-noise ratio worsened intolerably.
I miss it personally, as a way to chide failing service providers & retailers – moaning on Facebook is not the same. And the Researcher to Reader Conference misses it as a way to briefly announce news – LinkedIn does not seem quite as effective, and is filling up with ‘trivial noise’, which is hard to filter.
In the end, it turns out that social media is best summed up by a wonderful cartoon (by Gregory in the New Yorker, I think) where one dog says to another, “I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking.”
Mark, I always loved Twitter back in the day for exchanging views and info w scholars in my field(s)! It wasn’t political except insofar as all thinking and expression is political in some form or fashion, but it was great for learning. And agreed about the announcement function, that was super important. Definitely seeing more of that on Bluesky now. Haven’t seen R&R there but I think you’d find a good community.
OK, we will give it a try:
https://bsky.app/profile/r2rconf.bsky.social
I think COVID had us all a little more entwined with our social media accounts more than we probably should have been for our own mental health (to David’s point), so one of my personal goals for 2024 was “more social, less social media.” By getting more face time with people (in my case, finding a community in the world of English Premier League fans), I’ve found my dependency on social media less and less. I’ve also made the move to keep LinkedIn to purely professional discussion and everything else personal (I won’t even friend coworkers on Facebook anymore unless we no longer work together.)
Not mentioned in this conversation is Discord, which I also see as a growing platform for social outlets. Because invites to servers are restricted in some way, you find a like minded community without the “incessant barking.” I wonder what role that can offer academia.
Thanks, Kate, good point re Discord.
Perhaps everything that needs to be said about the depths to which social media has sunk is right there in your finding football fans a more civil community in which to spend time. (Brought up in the UK in the 1980s when football hooliganism was always on the news – I’m sure present day US soccer fans are much better behaved!)
Echoing Charlie, good point about Discord. Just one of the places my kids tell me they hang out (eg not on the platforms where I am)!
Threads has a booming community of authors, editors, and other publishing professionals. It does have an algorithm, but it seems to work very well; it’s easy to train your feed to show you relevant people and posts. I think Scholarly Kitchen would be a good addition to that site. Threads also encourages extensive use of the block and mute options and even allows you to hide rude or nasty comments so that no one else reading your thread will see them. It makes for a much more pleasant environment where users can actually discuss things rather than post and run.
