Social Media Extravaganza

This week's episode of the Cliched Crow podcast looks at social networking, social media, and all the stuff that has been going on in it. Elon Musk spent $44 billion (about $140 per person in the US) buying Twitter about two months ago for a record 44 billion. A lot of people have moved from Twitter to Mastodon, a service, or a platform for social networking.

And welcome to another edition or another episode of the Cliched Crow Podcast, where we talk about a little bit of everything to deal with the content creation aspect, or live streaming, or the resources in hardware and all sorts of different stuff that affects us as a content creator, especially independent creators.

So, this is what the Cliched Crow is all about. Tonight, we are going to be talking about it. Social networking, social media, and all the stuff that has been going on in it. Most notably if you have not been living underneath a rock or you really do not care. Elon Musk had bought Twitter about two yes, almost two months ago for a record.

44 billion. Now, a lot of us say that he overspent, which. It was worth 10 to 15 million or a billion, I should say. If it's a million dollars, that's that. That's pretty much a steal. But he spent $44 or wow, $44 billion (about $140 per person in the US) (about $140 per person in the US) buying Twitter to make it his own private paradise of whatever he wanted to do with it.

Which, and as a result, cause. Everybody, a substantial majority of people leave Twitter. The last percentage I saw was about 40 to 50% of advertisement spend is just gone. It's not there anymore. Latest numbers for his Twitter blue, which is like a paid service that, you get a blue check mark, which used to be means something that the account was verified.

It is who it is. And there was like a process of. Now anyone can get it for eight bucks a month. That is only about 180,000 people within the US alone have purchased Twitter Blue, and I think I saw as well in the same article, I forget where, I think it was a variety report that at least 10,000 of them bought it but did not renew.

So, it's saying that people that are winning. YouTube, not YouTube, but Twitter blue are sticking around probably just for those that have the same group, think as Elon Musk, or just want to have that verification and can care less about the politics of everything else.

But what caused it? in relation to a lot of people moving from Twitter, they move to a service, or a platform called Mastodon. Now, what Mastodon is the same thing that if you're watching on Own Cast is in within the Fedi verse, which is segmented servers all connected to one another. Like how the internet used to be back in the day, long time ago, back in the day when we had a walk uphill and both ways in the snow and s.

And lava. It was the wild west of the internet back then. But anyways, getting back to it, Mastodon is part of what's called activity pub. It's a what is it? It is a wrapper around that service. So, you can have your own instance or let's say a server that you could use if you want to or join one of the already established ones.

And you can actually make your own instance or your own server, that let's say you want to be you like reptiles or you'd want to get a community going between discs disc golfers so you can make your own instance about that and be shared amongst all the other instances that are part of the fedi verse or within the Mastodon on e.

So, a lot of people went there because they saw it as like a Twitter alternative. What they were getting into is something a little bit more complex, Mastodon, and the Fedi verse is email, like you have a Gmail account, if you have a Gmail count or if you have a Hotmail count.

Those are two different services, but you can still talk to each other, no problem. But you still, what main problem is that you must actively follow or find that one person. With recent acts that have become too light like ivory, it hasn't made things a little bit easier to do, to get connected to other people.

Now, when people first came here let's say, let's just say two months ago from Twitter, they saw, oh, I must pick an instance. I don't, I'm confused. What the hell do I do? So that was like a first barrier of entry because people got so used to Twitter just giving you, holding your hand the entire way.

But with the Fedi verse and Mastodon and anything that is associated with that, you do have to use your nogging occasionally, to Get part of the actual service. Sign up with an instance or find an instance that you feel like you want to join and then Bob's your uncle.

But a lot of people saw that as a steppingstone or a speed bump. A speed bumps. Wow. My brain is not even here tonight. They saw it as a speed bump to getting started and with that first speed, they instantly thought in their mind this is not Twitter. I want to go back. So, they might have created an account, stayed for about not even a week, and then left.

So, we saw a substantial number of numbers. Two, three, 4 million members (about twice the population of New Mexico) or accounts being created within a brief time span and a lot of servers were what we're being hit hard with that extra load coming in from Twitter. It's amazing that one thing happened to cause so many people to leave one service and go to.

And it's interesting to see just the wave of people coming in. You see the up the uptick, again the steady down, but then it doesn't go down to where it was before. It's at a higher, the peak is, or I should say the valley is at a higher level. So, it's great to see so many people that go to Mastodon to try it.

And then we have a lot of famous people. We have what's couple the. I'm drawing a blank, but we have a lot of famous people, high profile accounts that had were on Twitter, decided, you know what, I'm done with this. I'm done with Twitter. That was my account. I'm going to Mastodon and. From my opinion, it looks like they're having a better time, better interactivity with the people that actively follow them.

So, it's nice to see that Mastodon is getting or gaining ground with the, what we call the normies, the normal people that are out there that normally would stay in like Twitter or Facebook and stuff like that. The sea that Mastodon is starting slowly, which is the best way to do it, is to have this slow ramp up to gain a foothold into the normal s.

Social media type of person that only posts once or twice a day or they post all their lunch or anything like that. So, it's interesting to see that happen in real time. Less than two months. All sudden it's a huge explosion. But now we have Twitter with, was it cloning or not closing, but closing the API for all third-party apps that happened about two weeks ago or a week.

Tap bots that made Tweet bot, and then he had tweet terrific. And all these other smaller apps, they lost access to Twitter. The infrastructure that provided the information that they can give to us as we use their service or their app. Because I guess what happened is that Mastodon and people moving away, Twitter, I'm not going to say who, but I'm just going to say as Twitter as a whole, because that's just the overarching what he's known for as Elon Musk.

But for right now. But I think what happened is that he is cutting off the An API for those third-party bots, not bots, but the third-party app makers, and now within on November, or no November, but FE February 9th, he's going to be cutting the An API for everybody. The free API should clarify because.

He is losing, or I should say Twitter has lost so much money in since these past two months that it's crazy ridiculous. It's wicked crazy as some people in Boston would say. So yeah, it's, you can see this slow decline. The burning of Twitter is actively coming, of coming to a head and that it. It's not going to be good for the next year because there's so much that must be done to stop the free fall of what's happening to Twitter.

But now let's go ahead. Stop from Twitter because in that aftermath, a news service. Had just arrived. That was geared mostly to just content creators on live streaming. What I'm referring to is the service called Hive. Now, when it first came out, it was only for iOS, and it was a little. It was okay. It was trying to be Twitter 2.0 but geared more for the content creators and live streamers, especially from Twitch and a little bit from YouTube, and only fans.

And Fansly, because they incorporated a lot of that culture into that particular app. What happened was that it was created by two people in college, and they were woefully unprepared for actively being the owners or operators of a massive network. Suddenly, within a day they were getting hammered, their servers were crashing.

People were looking at it and saying, hey, you don't have a privacy policy. You don't have a term of service. You don't have this. We don't know what's going on. We don't trust you to take care of our information and what's going on and we can't get in. It took about, I think two weeks that Hive was active and the owners or the creators said, okay, we're going to turn off the servers for now so we can, fix what's, what needs to be fixed and then get back to.

Unfortunately, that is like a death that has an execution right there because the entire internet sphere of thinking and the intention span is like fast. It's let's by you must have someone's hook within three seconds, especially on YouTube or TikTok or anything like that. You must work within three seconds to get that person's intention.

If you. They're gone forever. So, what happens is that they turn off their servers for about a month, I think three weeks that their entire app was just off. You couldn't access it. And they said, okay, we're back. But no one's really going using it because they killed themselves.

They weren't prepared. They were trying to do something in the moment, but it fizzled out., and like I said, it killed themselves because of their actions of not being prepared and not having the things in place. You can still access it. It's I don't even, I believe I took it off my phone here, but yeah, I did it.

It was okay. It wasn't the best thought out app. Like I said, it was geared for content creators and live stream. We've had those before. We've had services like Hover that tried to be the TikTok for Twitch streamers, and it was trying, it was had it had, let's just say it had a good plan and an innovative idea at the beginning.

What happened was that it just became a runaway success, and it was turned into a follow for follow support for support. Stuff started getting abused with their point system that they had, and eventually he's just the lead developer and the c e O at the time left. So, it was left on by the wayside.

And of course, with the bad press that it was getting with don't use this because if you're trying to use it too. Numbers or you get more viewers for your Twitch stream. It's not a safe way to do it because all it is, like I said, is a support for support or follow for follow, and those never work to get any kind of real meaningful community started or a viewership started with your live streaming, especially on Twitch, but.

That's just died. Hover died officially about two weeks ago. They have turned off or closed out their Twitter account. You can't go to the website anymore. It's gone. So, it's officially dead. Dead. It's d e d dead Now. Another place that I saw that was starting to come up was Twitter like.

What I saw from it is on the blockchain where you create your account and you give a like your pr not private key, but a public key like cryptocurrency or your crypto wallet. It's a DEOs, it's an iOS app, and it's remarkably interesting. It's just very Crypto centric. What I like to call it, cuz a lot of the discussion I've seen so far from what I've seen is about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

And currently, or I should not say day and age, it's like crypto night to content creators. Or I should not just say content creators, but majority of content creators. I don't want to get into cryptocurrency or web three because of the stigma that is associated with it, it's a scam.

There's everyone's been burned by so many of these vanity coins that have come up. The ones from like couple of the Faze Klan members. think even Logan Paul or Jake Paul, one of the Paul Brothers set something up. What's his name? I show speed was involved in a crypto wallet scam thing that he got called out and it wasn't, and he is saying, oh, I was something else.

And trying to, cya him from the cryptocurrency that he got involved with. So, a lot of the time with. This new age of social networking is almost becoming a chaotic situation. I can see that Mastodon is becoming a forefront for love content creators and independent live streamers and stuff, and an artist because it gives a.

Aspect of their own work that they can control and that they can put out there on their own without having to worry about the algorithm or worrying about, okay, I must get so many amounts of viewers and tweets and likes and retweets and stuff like that. It's. It brings it back that you don't have to work as hard not as hard as work as hard, but you can focus your work better in a better direction instead of having to worry about the algorithm.

Because as it was with Twitter, and probably still is, I haven't really, I've, I. Semi or semi-close my account, it's still there because I don't want to lose the name, but I can see that how the larger content creators would have to work so hard and creating the content and spend the same amount of time working on getting there, in their content out there to masses and having to worry about the numbered games, and it's just, you don't have to worry about that.

So, it's like looking back at the old days. I mentioned earlier how it was like in the Wild West. You didn't have to worry about the algorithm because there wasn't any., all you had to do was get your name out there and basically say, hey, this is me. And start talking with other people, collabing with other creators or other people, and that's how it you, how it should be and how it used to be.

Now another thing is getting your message out there is especially with Mastodon, we must worry about the hashtags because there is., there is no algorithm. That's the algorithm is the ha, the hashtag. So, it's funny to see all these posts with all these hashtags. I'm like, I'm not used to this anymore.

Because it was, you didn't want, you shouldn't back on Twitter. You shouldn't put it as many hashtags. Three at the most, but here it's like my hashtag, here's a hashtag, you want a hashtag, here's another one. Everyone gets a hashtag. It's like the Oprah moment, right? So, it's fun to see the collaboration with all these people coming in.

And it's for my own personal take from it with Mastodon versus Twitter is that I've gotten. Interactions with other people. With a much lower number of followers than I ever did on Twitter. Twitter I've had, I was, I was more worried about trying to get the numbers up, trying to do this, trying to on what is the best way to get your tweet out there and seen by everybody, what words you must use to have the algorithm.

Gods grant you an audience with the rest of the world., I don't have to worry about that anymore. And it's refreshing to not have to worry about all of that. And it's just, like I said, it takes off so much worry and stress and having to worry about that. And it's just actually created the content, make it as best as you can and then post it out there.

If it doesn't go. If the pick gets picked up. A lot of people. Hey, that's more power to you. That's the best thing that you can do. But it's just the thing is., we see all these options opening before us. Like we have pixel feed for the Instagram people that want to post those pictures.

That is part of the activity Pub Mastodon and Averse as well. And it's great to see all these trivial things in their own cast. I am streaming on my own cast right now, which is, and I'm not going to say it's a competitor because it's just, One stream, one server and that's it. It's an alternative to Twitch if you're not wanting to worry about the Twitch algorithm and discovery, which is dog crap there on, on Twitch.

It's just nice to post the content, create the content, and then get it out there for everyone to enjoy and move on to the next piece and it's just freeze. You as a content creator can create content creator to do so much more that you could have not been doing if you were worried about algorithms and kingmaker systems or finding, trying to get discovery and stuff like that.

So, I can see 2023 for the social networking aspect of everything. It's going to be interesting. If Twitter continues to keep going the way it's been going, and bleeding advertisers and bleeding users and just letting you know the inmates or the yeah, the inmates run the asylum it's not going to work out too well.

He's going continue to bleed money and it's just going to be one thing after another. I see Mastodon becoming a leader in what is going to be as a social networking of the future for the next couple years because things change. It could be something else that comes up that is where everyone decides, oh hey, let's go to this because this is better.

Who knows, I'm not going to say this is going to be the end all for. Three years. I could be wrong, and I will be, be wrong. I would love to be wrong, but yeah. But if you have any other questions or comments about what social networking or anything like that, if you have a service or a platform that you think that missed or want to bring to an attention, everybody, go ahead, lead the comments down below, or you can join our community at indiecreatorhub.com.

You're going to also go to one of these, I have the picture there on a live feed to listen to the audio portion of this podcast. That will be available next week or the following week for the live recording. You can find it on Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher Spotify, apple Podcast, everywhere.

So do be sure to you. Papa follows, does all the things here on YouTube or on own cast or Twitch or whatnot. I'd love to see you, but until next time, I want to say have a good night and I'll see you next time.