Social media — True social? Quality media?

Social media — True social? Quality media?

Are the ‘big name’ social media platforms fulfilling our needs?

Perhaps there’s another question that should be asked first, ‘Did we get sucked into the whole social media revolution thing without actually defining, or even understanding, our needs?’

One thing’s for sure, more and more people are questioning whether their use of the big social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) is enriching their lives or whether those platforms have become millstones around their necks.

Speaking personally, I ditched Facebook and Twitter in 2019 after finally admitting that they were taking over my life. Worse still, they were distracting me from the things I really wanted to do while giving me nothing significant in return. I can honestly say there hasn’t been a single moment when I’ve regretted that decision and, despite preparing myself for the anticipated withdrawal symptoms, I never once found myself missing either of them. In fact, quite the reverse. It genuinely felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Nonetheless, I frequently found myself pondering on why social media has become so big and why it didn’t deliver the goods for me. I think, as I suggested earlier, that I leapt onto the bandwagon without defining any goals. Many moons ago, when I created my Facebook account, it was still very much aimed at connecting with friends and family, but how quickly that became friends of friends, acquaintances, acquaintances of acquaintances, Tom, Jack, and Harriet that, to be honest, I didn’t know and, maybe, hadn’t even heard of. Having more followers than the next person became a holy grail. More followers. More posts. More likes. More comments. More garbage. Less time. Then, along came the people that weren’t really people. Businesses, influencers, paid for content, purveyors of news, purveyors of hate, extremists, and conspiracists. Of one thing I was certain, the big platforms had lost their way and, like the piper’s children, we were following blindly.

So, is there still a place for social media? Was there ever?

Unequivocally, yes. If there wasn’t, then the ’big name’ social media platforms, and the businesses behind them, would never have grown so fat, so fast. The problem, as I see it, is that a platform for keeping in touch with what your friends and family are up to should be separate, or at least separable, from the attentions of people that we don’t know and who want to mess with our social relationships in order to influence our opinions, or sell us things.

With those points in mind, I have been looking for new and emerging platforms that might be worth exploring. My two mantras have been that any platform must be truly social and that the adjective ‘quality’ should apply, in every sense, to the media content. I have signed up to and evaluated dozens of hopeful Facebook/Twitter/etc. alternatives only to be disappointed but I have come across two that continue to hold my interest with each being positioned to address different needs:

ELLO — The Creators Network, a publishing and collaboration platform connecting & supporting a global community of artists

As ELLO’s strap line suggests, this platform is aimed fairly and squarely at creators. When signing up, you are first asked whether you are joining as an Artist or as a Fan. In either case, you can then choose the creative categories that you are active in or interested in — 3D, GIFs, Art, Photography, Design, Illustration, Curation, Writing, Music, Fashion, Makers, & Architecture. ELLO’s selling point is that you can add buttons to your profile that enable you to Collaborate in projects with other members or to Sell your creative products.

It is important to note that this platform is aimed at building social relationships between artists and their fans. As such, it would be separate from any platform that one might choose to keep in touch with friends and family.

My early impression is that, while the concept is sound, the number of active users is low and the content is poor. I’m sure that the quality of the content would improve if the membership were to increase but there is a more worrying observation that really concerns me. At the time of writing, I have posted 16 articles that have collectively been viewed in excess of 20,000 times. That’s an average of 1,250 views per post. Yet, so far, I have not received a single ‘Like’ or a single comment and my handful of followers all look pretty dodgy! It feels as though members have taken a vow of silence. The reality, I fear, is that the membership base is made up almost entirely of creators and that the number of fans are few and far between. If my suspicion is correct, then it means that ELLO’s space is congested with artists showing of their wares to a very limited audience.

At this time, I feel that ELLO is better at presenting text-based posts that it is at showcasing images. Consequently, I am posting articles that represent my ‘writer’ self for the evaluation. I will append any updates to the end of this page as time progresses.

Vero™ — True Social — Social without ads

The name, Vero, was chosen because it means ‘true’ in Italian and true social is the number one message that the team behind the platform want to promote. Their second selling point is that the platform will be ad free. In order to achieve that second objective, the platform will eventually need to be subscription based, if it is to become profitable. The original plan was to make it free for the first million users to sign up but, even though that number was passed some time ago, it remains free for the moment. Whether early adopters will eventually need to convert to a paid for model is currently unknown.

What does Vero™ mean by true social? Social interaction falls into two groups: connections and followers. The clever part relates to social connections, which are divided into a further three categories: close friends, friends, and acquaintances. Each of these categories can have its own avatar or profile image — the acquaintances avatar is also used for posts shared with followers. These distinctions are reinforced every time you post because you have to choose the target audience. The default is for your closest friends only. These groups and categories give the Vero™ platform the potential to address both our private and public social media needs within one application.

Vero™ is certainly the platform that I am most excited about. Partly because of the points given above but also because it addresses my requirement for quality media — and it does that in two ways. The first, and it’s instantly noticeable, is how beautiful everything looks. A lot of work has gone into the design of the app to make it look classy and professional. This is true from the very moment you create your account and is achieved, in part, because of the second feature that I hinted at earlier. Posts are not simply random outpourings from the minds of the membership base. Every post goes into one of the fixed categories provided (Photo, Video, Link, Music, Movie / TV, Book, App, Game, Place) and each category has its own unique styling. It’s worth mentioning that the photos category allows for either individual images or galleries and, like videos, these can be uploaded from a file or taken live with the device’s camera.

Currently, music posts are limited to Apple Music, though I would hope that integration with other music streaming services is in the pipeline. Similarly, there is an Apple centric bias to the other categories. Book posts are only possible for books that appear in Apple’s eBook catalogue; App posts are for apps in Apple’s App Store; and so on. What the situation is for Android users I just don’t know but I intend to find out and will edit this article as necessary.

Regardless of the underlying operating system, anything, including music, shared from an external app will appear in the Links section.

As I said, I have high hopes that this app might just be what I’ve been looking for. Time will tell and, as with ELLO, I will add updates below.

Parting shot

It would be unfair to suggest that growing social media fatigue is entirely down to the actions of the big name platforms. We, the users, are the ones who have been guilty of confusing our real friends with our acquaintances. We are the ones who have allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of putting numbers of followers, likes, and comments before quality of content. No surprise that the value of what we read is no better than the value of what we post. If we are to take time out and then rebuild our social connections in a way that benefits all the stakeholders in the relationship, then we need to accept responsibility for how we construct our online communities. In short, we need to stop worrying about the quantity and concentrate on the quality.

Updates

Sadly, ELLO failed to live up to my hopes and expectations, so I have abandoned any further testing and deleted my account — one thing is for certain and that’s that ELLO account deletion is quick and easy!

Nigel Fawcett

One of the many benefits of being retired is that I get to spend so much more time in the great outdoors, not only as a photographer but in exercising one of my other great passions — hill walking. This is a particularly good fit when one’s photography centres around nature and the landscape. There can be few better places to do that than here in the beautiful mountains of Tuscany.