Lets start by saying, I enjoy writing a blog. I've been doing it for over 15 years now, and 99% of the time it is something I enjoy. When I started it, I didn't have a Twitter account or Facebook account. I didn't use Facebook to promote my Facebook account and only opened a Twitter account as people kept nagging me, saying that it would make it easier to know when I posted a new blog. At first you could only post short messages on Twitter, which was wonderful. We didn't have to put up with lengthy posts, by people who really didn't have much to say. You'd see the tweets of people you followed and they'd appear in Time order. Facebook was pretty much the same. I found Facebook to be good for catching up with friends and getting back in touch with ones who I'd lost contact with. At some point, and I cant be bothered to check when, Facebook decided that they knew better than me what I wanted to look at. At first, this was just ordering posts so I saw certain freinds posts and others I had to look for. Then I started getting adverts and 'sponsored posts', now all I seem to see is sponsored posts and old posts from friends, most of which I've seen already. If I look through my friends list and randomly click on someone, I find all manner of posts that I've not seen. It seems beyond the wit of Facebook to understand that I want to see posts from all my friends and I don't want to see a load of spam. It is interesting that you can report spam, but Facebook are the biggest spammers of the lot.
Then there is Twitter. It has gone completely bonkers since Elon Musk took over. It defaults to "For you", which is what Mr Musk thinks you want to see. I was confused initially when Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg posts started appearing. If I wanted to see their bilge, I'd follow them. I am sure some people feel the same about my tweets showing up on their timeline. It is also starting to clog up with ads. Mr Musk claims that he needed to do all of this to stop it losing money. Given that he staged a hostile takeover, I rather resent the fact that he is whinging about the state of the company. If he didn't do his due diligence, is it really fair to inflict this on us? It used to be that sometimes I'd get cross with people on Twitter, now it's Twitter itself that is the problem.
The bottom line with this is that I am absolutely fed up to the teeth with Social Media. There is little of interest. Most of the people I want to interact with have almost given up posting. For almost a decade, I've done a feature called "The Tweets of the Week in the London Borough of Barnet". I used to enjoy putting a collection of great tweets together and sharing them. The feature works best when those who's tweets are selected retweet the feature. That way, their followers get to see a selection of other interesting tweets, and hopefully all will grow their real follower base. Over recent weeks, there has been a noticeable decline in Tweeters bothering. Sometimes, they will retweet days or even weeks later. This tells me that there is a growing disconnect with Twitter. There seems to be a marked decline in views and engagements. It is a bit hard to tell as the analytics only go back a year for views. I know that far, far less people are clicking throuygh from Twitter these days. Probably 75% less than a decade ago. Now this may be because my blogs are boring, but the direct hits are pretty constant.
Even more irritating is the barrage of notifications for Tweets that are of no interest. I only want notifications if I am tagged, retweeted or liked. Twitters algorythms are absolutely useless at predicting what tweets I want to see.
Oh and finally a word about Youtube. They've put a feature on where you can't see videos if you have an ad blocker. I think Youtube are massive piss takers as they put ads on my videos, but don't pay me anything from the ads. That was why I put the ad blocker on. I also get ridiculous notifications. I know these companies need to earn money, but they don't seem to have any understanding of the fact that they if they make their platforms too money orientated at the expense of user experience, users will use the platforms less.
All in all, it seems to me that in the dash to wring every last bit of advertising cash out of mugs who pay to advertise on these platforms, they have totally alienated their customer base. I am not saying there isn't good stuff out there, as there is, but I rarely look at either platform now, unless I am completely bored or have just posted a blog.
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