A few social media experiments (some properly planned, others just accidents)
(as I was looking for an image for this tiny text I found some amazing artists such as the one featured here, Martin Whatson. Please check other great artists at https://streetartnews.net/2017/11/social-paradox-group-exhibition-londons-calio.html and https://inspiringcity.com/2017/12/01/street-artists-combine-to-create-art-exploring-the-social-paradox/)
1. I have a Linkedin account that I used productively in the past to find members of certain professions that I was writing about and interview them. Two contacts “almost” resulted in a productive partnership but then sank to the bottom of the “failed attempts” well. I receive several contacts from companies that want to promote a company I am not/don’t own. So it’s just sitting there for years, growing vegetatively.
2. I decided to test the groups and posted a question to five groups. The question was about the interactive power of the group itself or whether it was just a place to dump one’s links. Apparently, it proved the latter
3. I created a few small pages on facebook (I won’t name or link them). I feed them regularly with content. I want to see what happens to them.
4. I manage several training-related groups in Portuguese. They are 6–9 years old and relatively large, compared to other similar groups. They are all moderated and all posts must be approved by me. There is a constant flow or membership requests. There is also a constant flow of spam posts that I deny and exclude the member. I also feed them regularly. There is practically no interaction.
5. I have Twitter and Instagram accounts. I adopted the principle of never participating in the “follow-back” system. My accounts are rich in content, particularly the Twitter account, that has original curated threads. They have a lot of “reading” but they don’t grow because I refuse to participate on “follow-back-parties”. Since several accounts that got swollen by such FBP appreciate my content, it gets retweeted a lot.
6. I subscribe a number of newsletters. Some are because I’m actually interested in them but many are just an experiment: how do they word their titles? Why? I have a couple of years of collected material. I’m sure most people just delete the email: there’s not much inside it.
I regularly check the literature on that. There is very little consensus. Some authors believe that email mass communication is dying. Some have celebrated the death of Facebook so many times that it got boring (it’s not dead and it remains the most influential and large SM outlet). There seems to be a difference on what micro-blogging/viral content SM is most relevant in terms of political activism (and hacking, and troll-bot infection) by country. In the USA, it seems to still be Twitter, although the far-right is investing in alternative outlets. In India, Germany, and Brazil, Whatsapp seems to be the most relevant.
It seems, but I’m not sure, that the niche-specific platforms are growing in importance again. ResearchGate and Academia.com are increasingly important for networking among scholars. From sharing articles it is evolving into collaborative platforms.