Notes vs. Threads or is it?

Life after Twitter

Photo by Nicholas Green on Unsplash

I’ve been trying out some social media sites lately, although I didn’t plan on doing that. I have a few things to say.

I have a presence on several sites, including Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and others that I’ve abandoned over the years. I have a Linked In profile but I try not to cross the streams. But my true social media love was Twitter. Note the past tense.

I was a devoted Twitter user for fifteen years before quitting the site eight months ago, as I wrote about here:

TL;DR - I left Twitter because I feared that Musk would make it much worse than it already was - my belief is that’s exactly what’s happened but I didn’t stick around to find out. I also felt that I needed to take a break from social media because I was taking it far too seriously. Nonetheless I had a Twitter sized hole in my head and heart for some time, mainly because I missed the people I’d collected over many years. I mean, the friends and acquaintances I made there. Same thing, I suppose.

During the past few months I’ve tried several other social media sites, perhaps as replacements, perhaps just as diversions. As much as I’d like to think this newsletter will continue to grow indefinitely through word of mouth plus Substack network effects (and really, I’m doing fine in that department), I believe you have to be willing to go beyond your normal beat and reach out to strangers to let the world know about your work. Them’s the breaks when you want to keep growing your audience.

During the past seven months I’ve tried four different sites: Mastodon, Bluesky, Substack Notes and now Meta’s new Threads application. Mastodon is an interesting concept and in theory I’m onboard for a federated social media experience. But in practice I found it difficult to get in the groove there and connect with people I didn’t already know. So Mastodon, in its current form, doesn’t seem to work for me. Bluesky is too new, too limited (invitation only) for me to really grok although I see some of the former Twitter user base, just not many that I used to chat with. Some people really like Bluesky and I feel it’s worth keeping an eye on it going forward.

So now let’s look at Substack Notes, then Meta’s Threads.

Notes

Some of you have found your way to this newsletter via Substack Notes: close to 50 of you, actually. If I haven’t said it already, thank you!

I still think of Substack Notes as the collective backstage of everyone’s newsletters, almost comparable to the faculty room of a laid back liberal arts college or maybe the common room of an MFA program. Other smart people like

Taegan MacLean

have compared Notes to a bookstore cafe. The reality is undoubtedly more nuanced but it feels like these are good general descriptions.

With few exceptions I’ve found Notes users to be thoughtful and civil and it’s good to have a place to chat with folks I’ve “met” during my time writing this newsletter. There’s certainly some self-promotion happening (myself included) but it’s generally done tastefully. There are some sub-communities that are active in Notes: fiction writers in particular seem to be congregating together to find out how to best use Notes and Substack itself to create a “rising tide”, so to speak and more power to you, folks!

Notes is not necessarily the most diverse grouping of people in that it’s largely writers, artists and other creative people, with a fair sprinkling of academics, autodidacts, analysts and critics. I’ve heard that there are probably 1000 - 2000 active users on Notes so it’s certainly not going to replace the larger apps anytime soon, perhaps ever. But I enjoy using Notes and it’s largely free of some of the crazy and divisive shit (no better way to state it) that occurs on other platforms.

Instagram Threads

Meta has launched its own microblogging site that’s linked to Instagram. Threads does many of the same things that Twitter does although I’d say Threads was launched as a MVP (minimum viable product), meaning that its feature set should grow significantly over time. It doesn’t have many of the features that Twitter added over time, like custom views or direct messaging, as an example. But Threads makes it really simple to convert your existing Instagram followers into people you follow on Threads.

I didn’t plan on it but I wound up signing up for Threads when it launched this week, on the first day. I’m one of the first million users so, um, that’s something; supposedly Threads is close to having 100 million users already. I believe that the initial experience of using Threads will not quite match how it works six months to a year down the road but we’ll see.

There are a number of things that I don’t particularly enjoy about Threads right now. There’s a lot of posts by verified accounts (i.e. celebrities, companies and brands) which are vapid and insipid (insipid in particular because many initial posts from brands have a fake casual feel to them, partnered with inane requests from their followers to name a favorite product or thing which, come to think of it, are probably just companies trying to yank information out of their userbase so it can be used for marketing and sales purposes later on. This kind of behavior is completely on brand for Meta and its advertisers, to mine user data as much as possible, but OK, that’s a given.

What I didn’t expect and which absolutely delighted me was that Threads put me back in touch with people I genuinely enjoyed chatting with online, some of them for many years. Remember the Twitter sized hole I mentioned early on? Threads is filling most of that hole by putting me back in regular touch with people that I was missing, reengaging in slightly unhinged banter that hadn’t happened in months. There was enough overlap between the people I follow on Instagram and the people I used to follow on Twitter that it fulfilled a need that has been nagging me for months. It’s almost like rebuilding my former Twitter experience (I had more than 4,000 Twitter followers before I left) with a trusted core of friendly faces. No, scratch that, it’s exactly like that plus I was able to leave behind a lot of people that I don’t miss at all (vice versa, I’m sure). And I’m encountering some other interesting souls too.

It’s the final act of closure from my Twitter experience.

But… and here’s a big but… as much as I came to detest Twitter and the influence and policies of its current owner, I really don’t trust Meta either. I use both Facebook and Instagram much less than I once did, mainly because I don’t approve of many of their policies and actions. In the end the platform will revolve around data mining, targeted ads and a user experience that reflects corporate objectives, not user satisfaction. Yes, I know Meta needs revenue but their approach to making that money has never been benign.

This is my impression of Threads so far: it’s like being inside a gigantic trade show where everyone is a booth but some people are slipping away into familiar groups (which is what I’m trying to do although it takes some time and effort to do that). And I literally mean it, most if not all Instagram accounts that have made the leap to Threads are companies or professional influencers who depend on social media for their livelihoods. Many Instagram accounts are essentially sales pages or else front ends designed to pull you in and condition you to buy stuff. They’re fishhooks. Providing a big open feed to start with is a way for a bunch of brands to blast shit at you before you can get your bearings and start to get their hooks into you.

Threads’ big public feed feels novel and not uninteresting at first but it would have been swell to start with a dedicated following view (which I’m told is coming). I’d also want to see a Web browser version of Threads available so I can access it from a laptop computer - who knows if that will happen. Also, if there’s a chronological feed option in Threads I’d like to know how to get to it. The way Meta has destroyed that capability in Facebook and Instagram is another reason why I rarely use those apps - I like my updates in a logical order!

What’s next?

I’m going to keep using Notes - it’s an efficient and effective way to stay in touch with other Substack writers. I’d definitely like to see some improvements but I’d be happy if it doesn’t pick up too many more users.

I’m going to keep my eye on Bluesky and see how it develops. Maybe that’s where I’ll want to be long term because of my Meta trust issues.

As for Threads… it’s still early days and I could be pleasantly surprised with the app. I’m sad to say this because it’s petty but I’d like to see Threads take down Twitter or at least wound it considerably, probably to the point that Musk gets rid of it. But maybe that’s being unnecessarily spiteful. Twitter itself was horribly flawed for years before Musk bought it (though his personality and changes made it much, much worse) and maybe it just needs to continue along the path to irrelevance, housing its own right wing/extremist users to whom it’s adapted to. Platforms come and go. But like I say in my Threads bio, I’m partially there to spite Elon.

The real magic is in people and relationships, not the quality of your surroundings.. So I’m content to squat in a less than ideal environment for awhile because it’s the least painful alternative. I’m just happy to spend some online time with some of my favorite people again. Didn’t everyone share a crappy, cheesy hangout with their friends at some point, a place that was only important because of who was there? Threads can be that place, if only for awhile. And if not, some other place will appear. But this place will do, for now.

---

You can find me on most social sites as markdykeman, much to the chagrin of the other Mark Dykemans in the world.

Except on Twitter.