The social web is in a transition period

cih
2023-06-18T13:19:57Z

Have you been visiting just too many different social media platforms lately, checking them out to see what the deal is? Well, same here. It feels like I've been a guest every night in different houses for the past month and I must say: I am exhausted.

But it's not over, far from it.

And I'm here to give you a heads up: we've witnessed platforms dying in the past, I'm guessing most of us have been a part of some sort of digital exodus before but I have a feeling that this one is going to be more painful.

Mainly because we've created so much data over the years and the majority of it got collected by centralised platforms. There are very few ways to take it with us and move elsewhere, it's all locked in.

Backing up your data now would also be a good idea, before some CEO comes with up the plan that it should be a paid feature.

I just want to say that this is all to be expected because the social web is in a transition period, and that golden bookmark doesn't exist yet. However, I think there are some contenders for it. What I want to ask is: where will you go next?

I've got some ideas, feel free to add your preference if I'm missing anything.

Threads: Meta's Twitter clone that will be out some time this summer. It will be a federated (ActivityPub-enabled) platform.

Bluesky: Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter clone. This one is also federated but it uses AT Protocol.

Mastodon: The Twitter clone. It's got a fairly large userbase now, with lots of instances to choose from.

Blog: Maybe it's not a bad idea to set up shop on a platform like Micro.blog (which is ActivityPub-enabled and has got community features built-in) and lead a quiet digital life.

Threadiverse: Reddit-alikes.

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