Category: Social MediaCategory: Social Media

Social media apps are addictive by design. It’s built to keep you on the their site, in their ecosystem, for as long as possible every waking moment.

Instagram made $69 billion from us last year.
We made nothing.
Our attention is an asset.
Our imagination is their profit.
We create the value.
It’s time to send the bill.

The Meta Invoice creates an invoice to send to Mark Zuckerberg and company, saying:

“Meta Invoice takes the visible traces of your activity — posts, time, audience — and turns them into an invoice for the estimated value you’ve created for Meta.”

Link via Laura.

Did a surprise Substack Live today on a whim. Just me, a webcam, and my cat (Blue) losing his mind in the background. OBS melted down half the time (I have no idea what I’m doing), but here’s some threads worth pulling out:

Serving the people who already showed up

I keep saying this because it never stops being true: Notes is just social media. Chasing the feed means a few winners and everyone else shouting into the void. The only sane move is making your best work for the folks who already subscribed, not every stranger on the internet.

Why I nuked every platform except substack

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn — all deleted. The only “social” thing I use now is Substack Notes, and even then it’s more of an on-ramp to my newsletter.

(more…)

The biggest thing about getting away from social media and staring at our phone is remembering that things weren’t always like this.

The iPhone was launched in 2007, not even a decade ago, and we’re exhausted.

This new behavior came about by major companies (the unholy trinity) spending billions of dollars to instill the belief that we must be connected with everyone at all times.

In a recent Email Guidance session, someone told me about spending too much time on social media promoting their podcast.

Promoting our work on social media leads to likes and replying to comments and responding to DMs.

Thus, our marketing efforts on social media lead to more work on social media; we keep feeding the machine, and the machine gives you more busy work.

Eventually our work suffers because we’re also cos-playing as a social media manager.

Instagram and Facebook love all the time that we devote to promoting our work, all while we’re spending less time doing the work. We’re on their platforms engaging and interacting in the hopes of getting more likes, views, impressions. Pull the lever, win a prize!

But the prize we’re looking for rarely comes. We’re hoping for the click, which could lead to the subscribe. We engage, we like, we spend another 20 minutes interacting, hoping for the elusive click.

Let’s stop hoping and realize the truth: RSS exists.

Podcast players pull in new episodes via an RSS feed, and “feed readers” like NetNewsWire (my favorite) let us subscribe to blogs (even Substack newsletters and YouTube videos).

So when we publish a new piece, people get it without interference from algorithms, spam folders, or promotions tabs.

And if we devote time to making great work instead of feeding social media platforms, it would seem that our work could grow by delivering it directly to the people who care.

More on RSS:
“In defense of RSS” by Seth Godin

“The ancient technology of the RSS feed” by TK (YouTube short)

Q. How will I hear new music, find new things, see new art if I’m not on social media?

A. Did we not do those things before social media? Of course we did! Ask your friends, subscribe to newsletters, look up bands you see on flyers, read interviews with artists and see who they’re talking about!

See some fun answers from the community here!