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Notes -
Awhile back, there was some conversation about how a new social media platform could replace twitter if twitter users really don't like Elon Musk.
Today, I read about Bluesky social and it reminded me of that exchange. Now, the article includes a quote from Jack Dorsey that throws out a lot of applause lights, like "freedom," "choice," and "independence." Has anyone else heard about this?
Something I think is interesting is the remarks about needing an open-source model instead of a company. Whereas companies can change direction and leadership (Twitter...), an open-source standard can be implemented by all sorts of groups.
It's also possible that there will be attempts to migrate The Conversation off of twitter and onto Bluesky. I personally don't think it'll happen, but I'm also not brave enough to give any specific predictions or confidence numbers. Is anyone else?
Well, we already have mastodon which seems to work and is open source. There's open source, then there's our open source. Yes, Bluesky makes reference to something called the "AT Protocol," and seems to have bigger ambitions than merely serving up short text posts, but those ambitions likely miss the point, or probably don't require an entirely new project instead of mastodon.
I'm of the opinion that most of the success we see in the social media space is happenstance. It seems to be very difficult to get people to adopt a new social media site or migrate to a competitor. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is, and once everyone is somewhere, how do they get to be somewhere else?
I will also say that it's weird to see seemingly identical features be developed in Facebook/YouTube/Instagram to copy Tik Tok, and each implementation feel so different. Nothing feels, or is as good as, the short videos you find on Tik Tok. I don't get it. You'd think creators would be interested in x-posting their content, and maybe they do, but I don't see it.
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