Serendipity35

For more than 18 years, the social network X (which many of us still call Twitter) has dominated short message social media for almost 20 years. Many people still go there for real-time updates, breaking news, and conversations. But - and it is a big BUT - changes due to Elon Musk's management of the platform the past few years have had many users leave. 

People are concerned about the lack of content moderation, reduced privacy protections, and subscription-based features (like paid verification). The general gripe is that it is an ugly space full of hate and misinformation. Users have sought out alternatives to X, and that meant there was a new user demand to be filled by other entrepreneurs. 

Alternatives range from decentralized options like Mastodon to community-driven spaces like Bluesky. I have several clients who wanted to move off X to "something else" and asked me for advice over the past year. Friends have said to me, "You're still on Twitter? Why?" 

The alternative most often mentioned is Bluesky. Interestingly, it was founded by Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey. Bluesky initially began in 2019 as a project within Twitter to develop an open social protocol that would allow multiple apps to operate seamlessly. It was spun off as an independent entity in 2021. Its claim and appeal is that it offers algorithmic transparency and user control, enabling individuals to tailor their social media experience.

Is Bluesky a return to a gentler, saner social-media experience? It does feel like the Twitter of a decade ago. It's not the 2017 Twitter that was full of political Trump and anti-Trump pollution.

Recently, I created an account just to see what it's all about. It looks like Twitter. It even has a winged blue logo (a butterfly instead of a bird) and a character limit on posts. I am cautiously proceeding, following only a few. I have already read complaints that it has "MAGA trolls" and complaints by those accounts that they have been blocked. Is it liberal-left? The most followed account belongs to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). 

Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe how social-media companies make changes that benefit them, but gradually, and almost inevitably, the user experience degrades. I suspect that more than just the user experience degrades.The content degrades. 

Facebook and X have both been criticized of late for burying some news by deprioritizing links to articles. Instagram and Pinterest have been filling my feeds with some crazy, irrelevant AI-generated content. Sometimes my Instagram feed is 75% ads and people I don't follow. Where are the things and people I selected to follow?

What are the other alternatives in the microblogging world of social media?

Threads is Meta’s entry into the space. It's their "Twitter-killer," but Twitter survives. It allows users to post text updates, images, and videos, engage with hashtags, and interact through likes, comments, and reposts. While Threads functions as a standalone app, it is seamlessly integrated with Instagram, allowing users to sign up easily and access it through a tab within the Instagram app. It also encourages you to share your Instagram posts to Threads with a click. I use both, and I do sometimes share, but that seems repetitive. Still, my "audience" in Threads may be different from Instagram, though there is some overlap. Meta integration led to a staggering 100 million sign-ups within its first week, as Instagram users checked out this new social network. Threads' ad-free interface, clean design, and connection to Instagram’s ecosystem make it appealing, and so far, it is not as polluted as X. It is the text option paired with Instagram's visual option. A good idea for Meta.

I also added the Substack platform this year. It offers writers, journalists, and creators a space for short-form updates and community engagement. It is more blogging than microblogging, and some people write quite long pieces. It offers the option of having free or paid subscribers. Like Medium, that leads to the frustration of clicking on an interesting title and hitting the paywall. Substack Notes is their complement to the subscription-based model. Notes allows users to post microblogs, share snippets of their work, restack content they enjoy, and tag others to spark conversations.

On the plus side, Substack Notes focuses on more meaningful content rather than algorithm-driven visibility. As of now, it seems to be prioritizing quality over reach. Public by default, Notes appear in the feeds of followers and subscribers, allowing creators to build relationships while promoting their work. Though it lacks advanced interactivity or paywall options for full posts, Substack Notes is ideal for content-focused users seeking an integrated platform for sharing ideas and monetizing their audience.

I am feeling old because I am still using LinkedIn and Tumblr. 

For professionals seeking a viable Twitter replacement, LinkedIn stands out as the one social media platform that seems "professional" and is tailored for networking, career growth, and industry engagement. Unlike microblogging platforms like X, LinkedIn emphasizes professional connections, enabling users to share updates, articles, and career insights in a format similar to tweets but with a focus on meaningful business discussions. As a social network, LinkedIn excels at fostering connections through its intuitive "connect" feature, where users can expand their network by engaging with mutual contacts and industry leaders. With its robust job postings, company pages, and professional tools, LinkedIn offers a structured alternative to platforms like Mastodon, Reddit, or Threads for those prioritizing career-focused interactions over casual content. 

Though Tumblr is quite a different platform from X, it offers far more creative ways to share ideas and connect with others online. It combines blogging with an emphasis on visual storytelling (like Instagram) and allows users to post quite long text updates, images, GIFs, videos, and links. This separates it from most of the others. It really is a micro- or mini-blog platform. 

Unlike the fast-paced, real-time interactions of X, you won't get the "news" here. Tumblr focuses on creativity and individuality, with customizable themes. What you may get is a lot of celebrity photos and nudity, even though they tried (unsuccessfully) to purge that content a few years ago. 

 

Mark Zuckerberg was testifying recently in a landmark antitrust trial brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Meta. The FTC alleges that Meta, through its acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, has unfairly maintained a monopoly in the social networking market. The government claims these purchases were part of a strategy to "neutralize" competitors and stifle innovation

I wrote a post here in 2006 when Facebook first became available to the general public. Initially, it was launched in 2004 as "TheFacebook" and was limited to Harvard students. Over time, it expanded to other universities and eventually opened up to anyone aged 13 or older with a valid email address in 2006. I have repurposed that old post here in an updated version.

I jumped in right away. I was at a university, and I immediately thought this would be big with students, and that the faculty needed to know what it was about. The faculty was not interested in the presentations I offered. I did one on "social media" and where it was headed.

Facebook wasn't the first or the only player.

• MySpace was very popular at the time, and it was the go-to platform for music lovers and personal profiles.
• YouTube launched in 2005 and was gaining traction as the place for video sharing.
• Flickr was the favorite for photo sharing and had amateur as well as professional photographers.
• LinkedIn: Focused on professional networking, it was already carving out its niche.
• Friendster's popularity was waning, but it was still a notable player in the early social media scene.
• The lesser-known Orkut gained popularity in Brazil and India but not in the U.S. It was Google's failed attempt at social networking.

In 2004, the soon-to-be social networking giant was a baby called "The Facebook.” The19-year-old co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg needed to explain the concept behind the site,. Check out this explanation he did in his first-ever television interview with CNBC on April 28, 2004.

In my 2006 post, I wrote about the American fascination with turning nouns into verbs, so for a time people were saying that you could be "facebooked."  That verb meant the action of 1) looking someone up on Facebook or 2) asking someone to be your friend on Facebook.
"I Facebooked that girl I met at the party last night, and she Facebooked me this morning, so now we're friends."

You could also "poke" someone which was a suggestive term for a kind of gentle message without content. You could send an email-style message to them or leave a message on their "wall."

It is interesting to read what Zuckerberg said 19 years ago about the website and consider where it is today. The definition of Facebook, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2006:

"The idea for the website was motivated by a social need at Harvard to be able to identify people in other residential houses. Harvard is a fairly unfriendly place. While each residential house listed directories of their residents, I wanted one online directory where all students could be listed. And I've always enjoyed building things and puttering around with computer code, so I sat down and in about a week I had produced the basic workings of the site. 
We had a launch plan to enter into other colleges based on where friends would be most likely to overlap, so the site spread organically based upon that model, and now we operate on a broad spectrum of campuses. It doesn't make sense to exclude anybody or any college from the resources that Facebook offers. This is a product that should be fun and useful for all college students.
We don't view the site as an online community. We bill it as a directory that is reinforcing a physical community. What exists on the site is a mirror image of what exists in real life.
To a certain extent, the website is unfortunate because it oversimplifies things. Everybody's concept of having a friend is different. It can definitely blur the relationships that exist between people. But in the end, I think that thefacebook can only reinforce preexisting communities. We think we have been particularly successful in strengthening those relationships that exist between people who are only “fringe friends.
It's not unusual for us to receive an email from somebody saying, "I spend all of my time on your website and now I have less of a social life than I had before." We would much rather have people meet people through the website and go out and party than stay at home on a Friday night reading other people's profiles. And it's surprising, but we have actually received far less complaints about stalking than we otherwise would have expected."

Here are some of my 2006 stats about Facebook:
- 12 million users (*MySpace has 54 million users)
- 300 million page views per 24-hour period - page views surpasses Google
- Facebook comes in seventh in terms of overall traffic on the entire Web
- 70% of users use the site every day
- 85% use it once a week
- 93% visit monthly
- The site makes more than a million dollars a month in ad revenue
- Since its start, a high school edition and a photo upload and tagging option were added

I joined Facebook mostly to see what it was all about. I knew that my college-aged sons both used it. (It seemed like my younger son - a freshman in 2005 - met a hundred people at his school through Facebook during orientation and the first weeks, plus all his high school friends at other schools that were added to his friends list, and then their friends who added him.

I felt pretty sad at first because I had no one to add to my list. I started with my sons, who "allowed" me to be their friend list (you do have to approve someone's request to be added), though they made me promise never to put something on their wall. Facebook was not really for mom and dad.

Because early on, parents and adults played no real role in Facebook (though alumni can create accounts for their alma mater) I didn't expect to find any of my classmates there. Faculty could have a profile at their school, but that was rare in 2006.

What really bothered me at first was that my profile said, "You have 0 friends at NJIT." I planned to do a presentation to faculty at NJIT about this new website, so I had to Facebook a few students that I thought would say yes to my request. Then I started searching students I had taught in my former K-12 days. Found a few and sent them a message. And that led to a few of their classmates finding me. Social networking...

When I did my first presentation, I had 37 friends - which by Facebook standards was pretty pathetic. It for younger readers to imagine these early social media ( aterm no one was using) times. I only had 55 people on my AOL AIM buddy list, so 37 seems was about right.

When I showed the site to faculty and academic and non-academic friends, the most common comments were:
Yeah. So what's the point? [Remember, most of my friends are old.]
Why does everyone seem to have an alcoholic drink in their hand in all the pictures? [sad but true]
Many more females than males on Facebook. [True]
Wouldn't it scare you if you had a daughter and she was posting pictures, her dorm room #, email address and other info online? [Yes}
Doesn't it scare you that your sons are doing that? [To a degree - but maintaining a common double standard, not as much.]
What about identity theft? [As with any sitaution where you reveal personal information, facebook could open you up to id theft by giving someone enough information to attempt to create a fake account.]

One comment I heard did turn out to be true later that year. "Don't you think employers will check this kind of site when screening clients?" I had heard that but I doubted it would be widespread. It turned out that employers could get access through employees who were students, faculty and alumni from an applicant's school. I saw a posting that said "Monster.com [a very popular jobs site in 2006] is who you portray you are, but Facebook is who you really are."

In the fall of 2005, North Carolina State University disciplined several students for underage drinking after a resident assistant found party photos of them on Facebook. A few days after students rushed the football field following a Penn State win over Ohio State, campus police found pictures of the incident containing identifiable students on Facebook. Northern Kentucky and the University of Kentucky both have disciplined students they had seen drinking in pictures posted on Facebook. Campus police at George Washington University use Facebook to find underage drinkers. Employers and the career center at the University of Kansas use Facebook to evaluate students being considered for KU jobs.

People commented that "You can't seriously think that these people actually have 345 "friends?" Well, not the way we may have once defined "friend." I'm pretty confident that someone who has 345 friends on Facebook realizes that they are not friends in the same way as their 6 close friends that they see face-to-face regularly.

In 2006, I Facebooked Mark Zuckerberg. He had 323 friends already, but hey, you can always use another friend, right?

I was working last week on a post about the early days of Facebook when the news hit that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg were testifying in an ongoing antitrust trial examining whether Meta monopolized the personal social networking market by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014. (see https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/04/17/metas-antitrust-trial...)

Then, I was diverted by another news story about a federal judge who ruled that Google violated antitrust laws by unlawfully dominating the online advertising market with its technology. The decision opens the door for U.S. prosecutors to seek a breakup of the tech giant’s $1.8 trillion ad-tech business.

The court found that Google monopolized two key segments of the digital advertising ecosystem: tools used by publishers to manage ad space, and the platform that connects those publishers with advertisers. By tying the two products together, Google made it difficult for competitors to gain traction. A second hearing will determine what steps the company must take to restore competition.

The ruling follows a separate decision in August, in which another judge found that Google had illegally dominated the markets for online search and text advertising. Remedies in that case are still pending, though the government has proposed that Google divest its Chrome web browser.

• Google’s digital ad network declared an illegal monopoly, joining its search engine in penalty box
• Google, explained: Here’s how it captures the online ad industry

I saw that today is the anniversary of the start of Facebook back in its undergraduate days of 2004. An old post on the now-defunct Writer's Almanac did a nice job of summarizing that early history, so I am using most of it here.

The social networking site Facebook was launched from a Harvard University dorm room on February 4, 2004 by  sophomore Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room (Suite H33 in Kirkland House). He was aided by three other 19-year-olds.

Zuckerberg was a smart, middle-class kid from Dobbs Ferry, New York who started writing computer software when he was 12. In high school, he created a program called Synapse Media Player and was offered millions of dollars for the product and job offers by both Microsoft and AO. But he passed on them in order to attend Harvard instead.

The program he created at Harvard was called Facemash. It displayed two student photos side by side and asked people to rank who was hotter. It would later be duplicated in various forms as a "hot or not" game. In the site’s first four hours online, the photos were viewed 22,000 times. The site was shut down by Harvard a few days later. It so popular that it overwhelmed their server, but also because there were privacy violations since Zuckerberg had acquired the photos for Facemash by hacking into Harvard’s photo directory.

A couple of months later, Zuckerberg began writing code for a site that would allow students to view each other’s photos and some basic personal information. This site, TheFacebook, was launched on this day in 2004 at www.thefacebook.com.

More than a thousand students signed up within 24 hours, and after a month, half of Harvard’s undergraduates had signed up. Zuck was in trouble again, this time with three seniors who claimed that they had hired Zuckerberg to create a similar site, but that Mark had stolen their idea. Several years later, they reached a multimillion-dollar settlement.