Any folks at sites have insight into where folks are going, social media wise, and what to do about a crashing Twitter ecosystem? Curious to hear from the crowd.
At the LNO, we’re still on Twitter—even our slowly shrinking community is far more widespread than what we could build elsewhere. We’ve started to add a bit more activity to our other platforms, cross posting info to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Mastodon, though Mastodon never really seemed to take off for us.
Our newsletter seems increasingly important, our following there continues to be strong. And our website isn’t going anywhere.
Anyone else have strategies around this? Tried out Threads? Started a newsletter? What’s working and what isn’t?
I gave Mastodon a try and it didn’t seem to take off. The vibe I am getting is that Bluesky seems like the next thing so far. Problem is that it is in Beta and people still need an invite.
Yup, Twitter now sucks. I tried instagram but its just facebook content in video rich format. less social media in my life is fine, but I appreciated the sharing of current papers and articles that Twitter provided. sigh.
@karahass on a personal level, less social media is totally fine. Twitter for the LTER was a great tool to get info out beyond our newsletter—especially for folks who might be interested in one or two things a year (synthesis RFP, for example) but not need an update each month.
@M_J_Spasojevic I’ll have to dig a bit deeper into Bluesky, seems promising. Thanks!
Our site (BLE) has not been active in social media historically, but we are currently discussing ways to change that. We have a twitter (X) handle but are reluctant to fully embrace it now post-Musk. NSF, LTER Network, other federal institutions, and other LTER sites (KBS comes to mind) appear to continue tweeting (x-ing). Should we put political blinders on and march forward?
There are lots of researchers (of all kinds!) on Bluesky. I personally enjoy it. I have some invite codes to Bluesky if anyone in the LTER network would like them!
Shoot me an email with Bluesky in the subject and I’ll send you an invite code – ariel@arielwaldman.com
My feeling is that the only people using Bluesky are actually academics, and so there might be an opportunity to build something there. It provides that aspect of what Twitter used to, in a much-diminished form, but at least it provides it. Unfortunately I gravitate towards Twitter mostly for politics and sports and so Bluesky is not that useful for me…but if I used social media like I probably should then it would be more useful.