Is social media an incredibly ineffective way of getting people to see your content?

I have a love/hate relationship with the interest graph algorithm. When it works you reach a ton of people, and more importantly it shows that there’s an audience out there for what you do. But the platforms hold them hostage. Even if thousands of people follow you, only a percentage will end up seeing your new post unless you make your content dance to the tunes of the algorithmic signals.

It’s why email lists are so powerful. When you send an email it always lands in an inbox.

Content of this week

• Repeat this mantra.

• The POV of working with someone format. Another way of exploiting rivalries between job roles or professions.

• The mundane thing made glam format. I’ve always admired how libraries can make content out of basically nothing, like putting rhinestones on a book trolley and turning heads in every room.

• Another banger from the Postal Museum. I’ve considered doing things like this before, but the thought of spending ages matching up imagery to the beat of a song makes me cry.

• Speaking of hating the algorithm, at least on Bluesky you still get the traditional network effect where resharing a post actually means something. This incredible BTS of the Siegfried Hammer and Forge by Royal Ballet and Opera only got a criminal 1.5k Likes on TikTok, but 2.4k on my Bluesky post. The only way of sharing content with your own opinions attached is through things like Stories, which can’t become their own threads and chains of conversation.

The bullet point bit

• I don’t have a link for this but you can now edit your own comments on Instagram (for up to 15 minutes after posting).

• They’re trialling a social media ban for teens in the UK. The fact that it’s a trial rather than just going straight to a ban says to me that the government doesn’t fancy doing it for some reason.

• Ticketmaster has been judged an illegal monopoly in the USA. If this leads to its breakup I would be a happy man.

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I’m reading the same book and watching Invincible and watching The Boys and listening to The Presidents of the United States of America.

🐕 Keith

Here he is