Where to Find Me in This New Social World

You might have noticed that social media is in a bit of a … transition, to put it mildly.

Like many of you, I’m working on figuring out what it all means and how to stay in touch with many of you who I now only connect with virtually.

Here’s my read on things at the moment, with the very strong caveat that things are still changing.

Facebook 🔽

I’ve been on Facebook personally and as a photographer for well more than a decade. I’ve enjoyed friendships with people I’ve never met and people from past chapters of my life who live too far away for in-person connections. But … I don’t think there’s any way to say this other than Facebook is past its prime. Many people I know and care about have closed their accounts or simply drifted away. I routinely get birthday reminders for people who I know haven’t posted in years. Those of us who remain complain constantly about the ratio of ads to content from people we care about. I’ll remain, but my own enthusiasm for being on FB is waning.

Twitter ⏬

My oh my, Twitter has become a hot mess lately. I largely stopped posting several years ago amid concerns about my privacy. (I subsequently went back and deleted almost my entire timeline.) The new leadership is not helping matters. At. All. I’m leaving my account open only to protect my name there, but don’t expect anything from me except pointers on where else to find me.

Mastodon 🔼

This seems to be the widely-accepted place for Twitter refugees to go to. It’s a bit confusing because there isn’t one Mastodon but hundreds of them, each with their own bespoke content and moderation policies. Choosing your “home” Mastodon instance isn’t exactly straightforward. This is both a blessing (decentralization means no single point of failure) and a challenge (non-technical users may find it difficult to choose their “home” server). But I’m giving it a whirl. If you’re in the Twitter and/or Facebook diaspora, try following me at at @scouten@ericscouten.social. As of this writing, my account is all of two hours old and I have exactly one follower (someone I’ve not met before – hello!). I think I’ll use this to post new blog articles (which also usually go to Facebook), but I’m not sure yet.

February 2023 update: I’ve set up a personal Mastodon instance at @scouten@ericscouten.social.

LinkedIn 🔼

I’m surprised to be saying this, but LinkedIn seems on the ascendancy again. I first joined somewhere around 2003, thinking it would be a good way to stay in touch with people in case my then-new-ish job at Adobe should somehow falter. Thankfully I’ve not needed the professional Rolodex in that fashion, but I have built and nurtured professional connections over the years. I recently attended the Internet Identity Workshop, a powerhouse conference on topics near and dear to my heart professionally: self-sovereign identity and authentic data. Hands-down, the way to retain connections made there was to find each other on LinkedIn.

Discourse 🔽

I participate in a few software-specific communities that are hosted via Discourse. In September, I quietly launched a Discourse site for my own blogs, thinking that it would be a good way to allow viewers to comment. No dice. I know from my web host’s analytics that there is a pretty steady stream of traffic to my sites, especially 146 Parks. Discourse’s analytics tell me there were a small number of views on the Discourse comment pages. And zero comments. Zero. So I’m shutting down that service. I’d still love to have comments/discussion about what I post. I think that’s probably best handled off-site. I’m thinking that’s probably Mastodon or Discord (see below).

Discord 🤷🏻‍♂️

I’m still figuring this one out. (My teenager is way ahead of me here! 🤣) At work, we started using Discord a few months ago as a discussion forum for our open-source efforts. To be completely honest, I’ve struggled to keep up with it. It feels like just another instant-messaging venue and I have too many of those already. I’ve learned that having things beeping at me (___ responded to ___) all the time is terribly destructive to my productivity. But if I switch the thing off, I forget to ever check the thing. (Discord being just one example of “the thing.” Slack, text messages, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, all fall into that same category.) But … it does seem to be in the up-and-coming category for how to stay in touch with people with low friction.

What Say You?

This site being statically-hosted, it’s not well prepared for discussion. So … here are some other venues where I’d love to hear where you’re headed to keep up with people:

• Discuss on Facebook
• Discuss on Mastodon
• Discuss on Twitter. No, let’s not.
• Discuss on LinkedIn

Or, if you know me in person or via text or e-mail or carrier pigeon, feel free to send your thoughts that way, too.