Tag Archives: social media

Snippets, Thoughts

Social media digging its own grave by prioritising paid customers?

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A few days ago I was reading a Bloomberg Tech Newsletter with the title Meta, Twitter Subscription Plans Risk Turning Off Everyday Users. Twitter had its paid subscription for some time, since the Elon Musk take over that’s been accelerated. Meta (Facebook) is implementing a similar plan now. Both apparently driven by shrinking advertising revenue. So far, so understandable. What I’m wondering about is hidden in these two paragraphs:

Still, what I find most telling about these subscription offerings is that the platforms will soon prioritize content from paying users over others. It’s a reminder that social networks have evolved away from the original premise of being a place to see mostly posts from your “friends and family.” They are instead focusing on attracting a certain kind of person – the creator – who makes fun skits or videos or blog posts.

Professional creators seeking more eyeballs have historically had to pay for advertising. Now, there’s another way — and the content that rises to the top because it was made by subscribers may not actually be as entertaining or interesting.

Meta, Twitter Subscription Plans Risk Turning Off Everyday Users

Both Facebook and Twitter are already full with advertising (or as they call them, “sponsored posts”), often of very dubious quality. If to that the algorithms will add the posts of paying users, or as they call it, will prioritise that content, will that not make the timeline of the average non-paying user even more unappealing as the updates from their friends will almost disappear?

What are the chances of this turning off the average non-paying users? Which in turn would mean the paying users hoping to get more impressions not getting what they are hoping for as well as the advertisers not getting their ad views, further reducing advertising revenue for the social media companies.

Are they hoping to convert more non-paying users to paying users in order to improve their timeline? I doubt that, considering they have been conditioned to “free” for many years, even decades. So could this make average users to reduce their social media time? Which in turn could also turn off the above mentioned paying users as their prioritised posts are reaching fewer people? Making the social media companies losing even more revenue?

Will be interesting to see how this develops over the coming years I think.

Pictures

Cat on the towpath

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As you probably know the internet was invented to share cat pictures on blogs and social media. During today’s Sunday morning walk (with a mixture of sunshine and clouds) I came across this cat. It was quite friendly and photogenic, so I took a few pictures which I’m now sharing here:

Click on the pictures for the larger version.

Pictures

The Sailing and Beach Bum Years

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Most people probably only know me with very short hair, the haircut I’ve now had for over a decade, probably closer to 15 years. But my hair hasn’t always been this short. In my younger years my hair for several years (mainly at school and at university) was quite long. When someone else shared a picture of him with long hair in younger years I had a look through some older prints I still have and ‘scanned’ two of them with Google’s PhotoScan. Here’s how I looked in 1989 (I think at least the picture with my Oma (Grandma) is from 1989) and 1993 (I know that’s from 1993, as it was taken when my parents and sister visited me while I was living in California):

(as usual, click on the pictures for the larger versions)