rachel

@wholemilk

she/her
rachel.live/

rachel @wholemilk1/19/2024, 7:13 AM

2 mello @MelloMakes

Aura @MOOMANiBE1/18/2024, 9:46 PM

no one seems to know what to do without twitter

The fact that 76% of developers responding to the GDC survey still use twitter in the face of clear evidence that the site is crumbling to pieces and may go bankrupt at any moment is a real moment to me of like... man, inertia is a powerful thing

a mere 10% of respondents having tried any of the new alternatives is esp fascinating to me - I feel like there's a popular perception that bluesky is "the new twitter" among its users but clearly brands and marketers don't feel the same way

I can't help but wonder if, when twitter eventually fully collapses, we're going to see a moment where a huge number of devs are just... caught out and have to rebuild from scratch. Like if you were going to get out, the time to start getting out is "as soon as humanly possible". It feels actively dangerous to me to not be at least trying to build up elsewhere as a hedge.

I guess we'll see.

2 mello @MelloMakes1/19/2024, 5:58 AM

No one wants to flee a service they put time into, but no one wants to lose all their networking overnight either. Save your contacts, scrape their emails/websites, and for all our sakes make the slightest effort to start connecting somewhere else. I would say "get a mailing list/website" but the time to start that was really like two years ago. I can't believe how many real businesses I see only promoting their stuff on Twitter or relying on it exclusively as a way to connect.

Unfortunately I guess 90% of devs won't see this, haha

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in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:

Regnslöja @regnsloja1/18/2024, 11:12 PM

i don't have energy to set up somewhere new and the "new places" all seemed just as bad or too complicated. cohost is the only one i liked enough to bother with.
if some dev or artist is looking at the new places and they don't consider cohost, then i totally understand just not going anywhere.
twitter isn't dead or anything, it still feels like the place to get quick info or namesearch your games. or if you want to see japanese posts.

Birdout: Paradise @SomeEgrets1/19/2024, 1:32 AM

i wonder how much is a perfect storm of bsky still being invite only and everyone being so fucking tired of twitter they don't want to touch anything that looks like it again (97% is a damning number)

Kat A. Beckett @KaterinaBucket1/19/2024, 2:29 AM

I find it interesting how social media sites and forums declining and new ones becoming dominant used to be like, a regular, recurring part of everyday life, but at some point it all became so ossified that even attempting to use a new website seems alien to so many people. Can you imagine if circa 2010 76% of any demographic were still clinging to myspace and fewer than 10% had even considered twitter?

Kenno @KennoArkkan1/19/2024, 4:38 AM

Omg im on the same boat. I started posting my art online since late 2008 and to me it was natural to run 4+ sites in tandem. Suddenly its crazy bananas to even consider ditching one (1) single website? I don't get it. Its like people never heard of "never putting all your eggs in one basket".

samson @squidcrusher1/19/2024, 9:33 AM

Yeah I used to sell on Etsy around the early 2010s, and the advice was always given to me was to be on as many different websites as possible. I was managing a Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and dA, plus probably more all at the same time.

I can understand how that might be hard to manage if art isn't someone's only job, but even just occasionally posting on other platforms is a great way to start to branch out.

@bobthebob1/19/2024, 3:12 PM

i feel the perception that bluesky is the new twitter is sorta fucked by it being an invite only members club, not exactly the greatest idea for growth i imagine?

@karadoc1/22/2024, 8:31 PM

I suspect bluesky might be using invite only to help its growth. It makes it feel like it has some kind of cachet. Like, you personally have been invited into 'new twitter', where only the cool people are... never mind that there are invite codes posted on random websites all the time. And every time someone talks about having, or wanting, an invite - that's some nice organic advertising for the site. Facebook and gmail both did this during their growth phase as well.

@bobthebob1/23/2024, 2:50 PM

almost certainly bluesky is, when i say "not the greatest idea for growth" i mean it isn't the greatest idea for growing brands that want to market on it, since inherently smaller userbase n stuff

Coyote @osteophage1/27/2024, 9:04 PM

Can you share the link this is from?

in reply to @MelloMakes's post:

@bobthebob1/19/2024, 3:18 PM

ig the ease of building stuff elsewhere wasn't exactly helped by twitter largely suppressing links to external sites, but god yeah it does seem weird seeing devs/businesses/creators/whatever having basically only 1 place they actually exist, and it's a place they don't even have control over? it's similar to what happened with unity almost honestly, whole thing went to shit but lots of devs stay because they don't have a way of going anywhere else without taking a hit
that being said, i've thought about this myself since i'd like to do some indie dev at some point personally, and i'm not really sure what the best option would even be for promotion, people don't really use their emails or an rss feed too much now (at least not to my knowledge) so it does feel like you have to rely on a big platform you can't control to at least mirror your own content to, very much a lose-lose situation idk

2 mello @MelloMakes1/19/2024, 5:19 PM

You would be surprised how many people actually do engage with email (and increasingly, since none of these sites feel fun to be on). My mailing list and Bandcamp email blasts are my most powerful outreach by far, aside from word of mouth. Similar to cohost, an email following may be small but you'll get a more dedicated and supportive response than a single-digit percentage of a thousand mostly apathetic followers on a social network.