Choose Your Weapon

Hello and welcome to a surprise Nonstndrd+Process drop! I was moved to write this bonus entry because of all the excitement surrounding BlueSky this past week. I’ll go over what I find interesting about this moment in the social media landscape and how it relates to my own approach running Nonstndrd.

I’m what you call an early adopter. I’ve been on social media in some way, shape, or form since the MySpace days. I was VERY active on Twitter for years, it helped to launch my photography career and got my work documenting Los Angeles international attention when I started out. But despite the positive results, I always used the various platforms as a tool instead of a medium. What I mean by that is I leveraged my social media presence to send people to my website, which was where my work could be found in it’s truest form. At their respective peaks, both Twitter and Instagram were both incredible promotional tools and provided a space to interact with other creatives and the people that hired them. Both sites became less useful over time as they began to incorporate UX and algorithmic tweaks that altered the value proposition for me as a user. And while Instagram has remained useful for me as an artist, Twitter promptly went to shit when it was purchased by Musk. This was on top of my personal rejection of everything that has to do with that man. Instead of staying on the site and complaining, I deleted my main account last year when I started my Archival Recordings project. This was also right around the time Threads launched and I received an invite to join BlueSky when it was a closed beta.

I won’t get into the early days of each platform too much but lets just say both have evolved significantly in a really short time. I’m more focused on where they stand now because, despite the similarities on the surface, they are very different platforms heading in completely different directions. Assessing what you are trying to do with social media will dictate which you prefer. For what it’s worth, I have a presence on both.

BlueSky

If anything, BlueSky has an energy that other networks simply don’t have at the moment. A sudden influx of hopeful users will do that to any system but the question is whether it will last. It does have a few other things going for it that should help, namely a robust blocking function and a really innovative custom feed feature.

One major plus to BlueSky that is often overlooked is that it doesn’t limit the reach of posts with links. I cannot understate how important this seemingly minor detail is. Before Twitter began penalizing posts with links, it was the main source of traffic for my website and online store. Being able to share direct links to your content allows people who might actually hire you to evaluate your work outside of the metrics emphasized by the platform. It’s a major win for independent creatives.

Threads

I have a presence on Threads also and it has a number of good things going for it as well. Although it is managed by an algorithm and does limit the reach of posts with links, the community there seems to be really in tune with creatives and artists in general.

Things do seem to move slower on Threads but as a result, posts tend to have more longevity. Overall it seems like a tightly curated approach, I’m interested in seeing where it ultimately goes. One thing is for sure, with over 275 million users it has the potential to get your work in front of an awful lot of eyes if you can crack the code.

I plan on maintaining accounts on both platforms, primarily because I use social media to promote my creative projects and both new platforms are infinitely better than what Twitter has become. Also, if I’ve learned anything over the past couple of years it’s that these platforms are not permanent. I invest so much into my two newsletters because I am building an audience that I would like to endure, regardless of the social media landscape.

If you would like to connect on either one, follow the links below:

• Threads
• BlueSky

Thanks for reading, see y’all out there!

Kwasi