Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media • Hacker News Board

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#101

Post by r00fus » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 1:57 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #73

nonrandomstring wrote: post #50

What I've noticed from working on the Cybershow over the past year is that the digital world is split cleanly into two realms that never touch each other. I avoid social media, and have never gone near Facebook, Linked-In or that stuff. But I do recognise and respect the audience out there who should not be ignored. So Helen does the "social media". I do the old fashioned web, email reaching out to other bloggers, pu…

> I hadn't realised that SM platforms basically no longer allow links This isn’t really true in general: You can post all the links you want on most social media, though there are tenuous theories that including links will get you less promotion on certain platforms. What is very true is that most social media users don’t like to click on links. They read the headline, look at the included image (if any), and assume…

I would agree but I definitely click on links in the comments that seem pertinent to the discussion (at least for high SNR places like HN)

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#102

Post by crtasm » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 1:57 PM UTC

nickfromseattle wrote: post #99

nonrandomstring wrote: post #50

What I've noticed from working on the Cybershow over the past year is that the digital world is split cleanly into two realms that never touch each other. I avoid social media, and have never gone near Facebook, Linked-In or that stuff. But I do recognise and respect the audience out there who should not be ignored. So Helen does the "social media". I do the old fashioned web, email reaching out to other bloggers, pu…

> We see practically no correlation between these worlds. Helen will say "We're trending on platform X" and I look and see nothing in the web stats. Maybe 2 out of 2000 hits cross over from Facebook or Twitter. Conversely, we can get on the front page of a big website, but have no activity on social media. Social platforms that send referral traffic often strip the referrer information, so your visitors will show up…

Why would they do that? My assumption would be they'd want to give you this constant reminder that you have an audience on their platform, so should obviously run a profile there and why not pay for some ads while you're at it etc.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#103

Post by naravara » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #73

nonrandomstring wrote: post #50

What I've noticed from working on the Cybershow over the past year is that the digital world is split cleanly into two realms that never touch each other. I avoid social media, and have never gone near Facebook, Linked-In or that stuff. But I do recognise and respect the audience out there who should not be ignored. So Helen does the "social media". I do the old fashioned web, email reaching out to other bloggers, pu…

> I hadn't realised that SM platforms basically no longer allow links This isn’t really true in general: You can post all the links you want on most social media, though there are tenuous theories that including links will get you less promotion on certain platforms. What is very true is that most social media users don’t like to click on links. They read the headline, look at the included image (if any), and assume…

> What is very true is that most social media users don’t like to click on links. They read the headline, look at the included image (if any), and assume they understand the whole story from that context. They jump to the discussion to comment about it or see what others are saying without leaving the site.

I also have been trained to avoid clicking on links if I can avoid it. It’s not that I don’t like it in principle or even that I want to stay in my social media wall. It’s that any time I click on a link to a website now I am all but guaranteed to A.) Endure multiple seconds-long waits to load the page despite a gigabit connection B.) See a modal asking me to sign up for a newsletter, often using annoying gimmicks to make me look to find the dismiss button C.) Have the content I’m trying to read skip and jump all over the screen as random bits of external content load in D.) Cookie banner

The web has turned into a user-hostile clusterfuck and ad-blockers only staunch a fraction of the problem. Bad design practices have led to a tragedy of the commons where everyone has contributed minor annoyances everywhere. It has sapped away all of people’s willingness to explore by introducing immeasurable amounts of cognitive friction to “surfing” the internet. And that’s all BEFORE we get to the floods of garbage content, SEO spam, and clickbait headlines that have made the upside potential of visiting a site or clicking a link lower than ever before.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#104

Post by nonrandomstring » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 2:03 PM UTC

nickfromseattle wrote: post #99

nonrandomstring wrote: post #50

What I've noticed from working on the Cybershow over the past year is that the digital world is split cleanly into two realms that never touch each other. I avoid social media, and have never gone near Facebook, Linked-In or that stuff. But I do recognise and respect the audience out there who should not be ignored. So Helen does the "social media". I do the old fashioned web, email reaching out to other bloggers, pu…

> We see practically no correlation between these worlds. Helen will say "We're trending on platform X" and I look and see nothing in the web stats. Maybe 2 out of 2000 hits cross over from Facebook or Twitter. Conversely, we can get on the front page of a big website, but have no activity on social media. Social platforms that send referral traffic often strip the referrer information, so your visitors will show up…

Thanks, good article. I like the experiment of multiplexing unique content to each service to correlate the "direct" returns. Way too much work for my level of care... but a cool technique nonetheless.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#105

Post by naravara » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 2:04 PM UTC

pixelmonkey wrote: post #82

weinzierl wrote: post #16

I find it interesting, that social media and messaging apps are kind of thrown into one pot increasingly. My mental model has always been like: - Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon - Slack, Discord, Zulip, IRC - WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Matrix - Zoom, Teams, Jitsi With mass communication to individual communication from top to bottom (and increasing freedom roughly from left to right). It seems these distinctions get blur…

I recently did a smartphone app audit and deleted 18 apps I classified as "social media, time wasting, and distraction." I deleted another 40 or so apps that were only occasionally useful, and that I could just install later if/when needed. As part of that process, I personally found that the full set of app categories useful for an audit are: A) essential (e.g. PW manager, email, maps, calendar) B) direct and group…

> D) episodic utilities (e.g. Airbnb, TripAdvisor)

I sort of struggle to think of the utility of these being installed apps. I feel like just doing a better job of designing web pages to run on mobile would be fine for booking a hotel. Notifications and location tracking is all you’d be missing, but that’s not THAT big of a deal. Those are both doable with PWAs now, and even before they were you could have just done it through email or SMS if you really had to.

There’s a lot of stuff where I just don’t feel like it needs to be an app and would be better off just a service that runs through a well designed website.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#106

Post by acheron » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 2:05 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #73

nonrandomstring wrote: post #50

What I've noticed from working on the Cybershow over the past year is that the digital world is split cleanly into two realms that never touch each other. I avoid social media, and have never gone near Facebook, Linked-In or that stuff. But I do recognise and respect the audience out there who should not be ignored. So Helen does the "social media". I do the old fashioned web, email reaching out to other bloggers, pu…

> I hadn't realised that SM platforms basically no longer allow links This isn’t really true in general: You can post all the links you want on most social media, though there are tenuous theories that including links will get you less promotion on certain platforms. What is very true is that most social media users don’t like to click on links. They read the headline, look at the included image (if any), and assume…

Clicks are currency. If you follow a link you are implicitly endorsing whatever is at the link, which I'm not going to do unless I'm already really sure of what it says. (Maybe you say "but I hated the article!" They don't care, they already got your hit and eyeballs that they will sell to advertisers.)

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#107

Post by yndoendo » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

acureau wrote: post #94

begueradj wrote: post #29

If you are too present on social media, there is no mystery left about you. You become too familiar to trigger the curiosity of a follower to click on another link you posted. The economy of attention doesn't lead far.

I'd disagree with that. Most people I know that use social media for marketing are just following the eyes, making as many people as possible aware that they exist and have done something. If you don't try to put your work out there nobody will know you've done it. If the economy of attention didn't lead far there would be no advertisements.

Marketing on Facebook or Twitter is a horizontal landscape. Those on the platform are your only traffic. Having a website outside of these types of platforms is a vertical market because one does not have become a platform tribal member to engage.

A number of restaurants and brick and mortar shops only use platforms to promote events and products. This means I have no idea of the soup of the day or when special trivia night is.

It is less expensive to just engage on a platform than maintain a non-tribal website. Those in the tribe do not see the exclusion they created with their horizontal market.

Irony is that a number of social media posts reference other sites. So the non-tribal website is scooped up by media platforms, creating a tilted vertical market.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#108

Post by dimmke » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 2:12 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #50

What I've noticed from working on the Cybershow over the past year is that the digital world is split cleanly into two realms that never touch each other. I avoid social media, and have never gone near Facebook, Linked-In or that stuff. But I do recognise and respect the audience out there who should not be ignored. So Helen does the "social media". I do the old fashioned web, email reaching out to other bloggers, pu…

This isn't really my experience. My personal blog gets a lot of traffic from Mastodon and my Umami stats show traffic from social networks and search engines for my startup https://pickwick.app

I do have trouble finding where on those platforms it's being shared/talked about though.

https://imgur.com/a/kwmooNM

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#109

Post by dawnerd » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 2:17 PM UTC

dimmke wrote: post #108

nonrandomstring wrote: post #50

What I've noticed from working on the Cybershow over the past year is that the digital world is split cleanly into two realms that never touch each other. I avoid social media, and have never gone near Facebook, Linked-In or that stuff. But I do recognise and respect the audience out there who should not be ignored. So Helen does the "social media". I do the old fashioned web, email reaching out to other bloggers, pu…

This isn't really my experience. My personal blog gets a lot of traffic from Mastodon and my Umami stats show traffic from social networks and search engines for my startup https://pickwick.app I do have trouble finding where on those platforms it's being shared/talked about though. https://imgur.com/a/kwmooNM

I have a feeling it’s because mastodon isn’t built to keep your eyes on the platform - people are more willing to click out to read linked pages.

Re: Almost no one cares if your site is not on social media

#110

Post by gryn » Fri, Apr 05, 2024, 2:19 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #16

I find it interesting, that social media and messaging apps are kind of thrown into one pot increasingly. My mental model has always been like: - Twitter, Bluesky, Mastodon - Slack, Discord, Zulip, IRC - WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Matrix - Zoom, Teams, Jitsi With mass communication to individual communication from top to bottom (and increasing freedom roughly from left to right). It seems these distinctions get blur…

Funny that you separate slack and Teams in my head they kinda sit close. I worked inside different teams & companies that used in different ways for some with the spaces it was more like a wiki in other places exclusively something like zoom, in my current team it's slack+zoom but to communicate with the non-engineering people of the company.