Threading the needle
A few random, quick thoughts on the crazy week in social media
It’s been an absolutely crazy week in the social media world.
On Sunday, I finally joined BlueSky (thanks to my friend Dr. Jenn Billinson for the invite), after Twitter had its Thou Shall Only View 600 Tweets A Day meltdown. Then on Wednesday night, I joined Threads (like, well, pretty much all of everybody) when Meta launched it.
This newsletter is going to be scattered, random thoughts on what I’m seeing and experiencing in these new spaces. I have no grand judgments, and certainly no big ideas on how this will affect sports journalism.
I’m approaching these platforms with inspiration from Ted Lasso.
Be curious. Not judgmental.
Wednesday night, my wife and I sat on our deck, scrolling through Threads for the first time. Honestly? It was thrilling. It was crazy. It was all the rides coming at you at once.
Most of the time, most of us have joined a social media platform that is already established. People are there, there are norms established, and you kinda learn to swim on your own.
Threads wasn’t like that. We all joined at the same time. And it was kind of fun, wasn’t it? That sense of discovery, that feeling a part of something new, that was cool.
Of all the Twitter clones that have come out in the past year since Elon Musk began immolating the site, it feels like Threads has the most upside. Signing up is easy - no setting up servers or waiting for an invite code. It’s got the full network effect working in its favor, because it draws from a popular existing platform. People are there, ones you already follow and whom you want to follow. I like the UI a lot - it’s clean, ad free. It feels like the best of Twitter.
But I could be wrong. Dave Karpf and my friend Jeremy Littau are both less impressed with Threads than I am to start.
I get it. Threads is all the rides coming at you at once. But that thrill can only last so long. As I write this, there is no Your Followers tab. The main feed is not a curated list of people you’ve chosen to follow but rather a firehose of influencers, brands and random people. If that doesn’t change, I see a lot of people ignoring the site because it’s too much. It’ll turn into the Google+ of the 2020s
The vibes on BlueSky are a little more chill. I’ve been impressed with the site, the design, the general tenor of the site. BlueSky feels a little more like what a lot of us want in a Twitter alternative, a social platform that can be vibrant and smart but without the Nazis.
But it has the opposite problem as Threads. Because it’s deliberately growing slowly, there isn’t the large user base there yet. You’re still figuring out who is on there and having to seek them out. Long term, this is probably smart and wise. But short term, it feels like a cool coffee shop that just hasn’t starting drawing crowds yet.
My friend Jenn Billinson also made an interesting point on Threads the other night: Do we bring our Twitter persona or our Instagram persona. She was kind of joking, but it’s a really interesting question.
Over the last 10 years, the social media world became settled and established. There was a Big 4-5 platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat/Tik Tok), and we all developed our own platform specific voices and uses. For me, Twitter was a professional home, Instagram a personal one. Twitter was for sports journalism thoughts, Instagram was pictures of my kid at various theaters and my dogs’ various shenanigans.
Now, what do we do? That settled order has been disrupted for users.
It’ll be fascinating to see how this develops in the journalism world. I’m hopeful Threads has an API, because seeing how quickly sports journalists started using it and how they were using it is a fascinating study.
For the time being, I’m trying not to be judgmental.
I’m too curious.
The Other 51
Episode 177: A Newsman’s Newsman with Chuck Pollock
This week’s episode of The Other 51 is incredibly special to me. It’s an interview with my first boss in journalism and one of the best people in the business.
How did a guy who started his career in radio become one of the most influential newspaper sports journalists in the history of Western New York?
Chuck Pollock, Brian’s former boss and the longtime sports editor and columnist for The Times Herald in Olean, N.Y., joins Brian to talk about column writing, journalism, and his 50-year career.
Chuck traces his career from the Vietnam War, through radio in Pennsylvania, and to the newsroom on Norton Drive in Olean where he worked for 50 years. He talks about working for Mike Abdo and Bob Davies and why they were so influential on him. He talks about what it was like covering Buffalo sports in the 1970s writing for a family-owned newspaper, the changes in the industry, why he left the OTH and what’s next for him.
We talk about the single-best definition of news either one of us has ever heard, and why having a column every day is so vital for newspapers. And where did Chuck’s unique typing style come from?