23 Comments

This is all super useful info as another creator trying to wrap my head around the direction the internet is going.

Just to offer some useful info in exchange - I think it’s possible your Tumblr stats might be unreliable? Since I’m here from Tumblr for one.

I run a Substack of about 3700 subscribers, almost entirely from Tumblr. I would guess like 99% Tumblr users. According to Substack though I have had exactly one Tumblr click through ever.

This cannot possibly be true. I know for a fact my subscribers are coming via Tumblr and interact with them on there all the time. I think whatever tracking Substack uses might not work on Tumblr.

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Holy shit I’m a Bluesky user who found you there, am I the one signup?? 😂

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I really think the "SNL ripped off the internet" thing is overblown. For a billion years, SNL has been inspired by pop culture, and they've been riffing on viral internet videos since at least 2010, without including an on-air TinyURL to the video that inspired it.

Should they have licensed the artist they were mimicking? It might have been nice, but also they produced that entire segment in a couple days for air. The "frog music" joke wasn't the central theme of the bit; in fact, you could barely hear it.

I thought Joel Haver had a stronger case a few months ago when he showed how SNL appeared to lift an entire video of his for a sketch premise, but he's also made clear that "making fun of the Charmin Bears' obsession with TP" isn't exactly the most wildly out-of-left-field idea, and that premises get copied all the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNWbI8T42II

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"At some point in the last two-three years, a likely-permanent shift happened online. It’s a video-first medium now"

I have heard this a few times recently, but I remember this was the huge push 5+ years ago from Facebook et al, and it led to newspapers and blogs drastically shifting their content strategy and workforce followed by layoffs when it turned out this didn't work and all of the numbers were fugazi.

Do we have good evidence its real this time? Is this just chasing after the runaway success of TikTok?

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This article reminds me I'm getting old.

Also, please god, don't let Substack become a video first platform. Resist! ✊🏻

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There's a fediverse sized blind spot in your coverage, and that's where the internet seems to be going more than corporate silos

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I'm starting to strongly suspect that X counts one second of "viewing" a video (even autoplays while scrolling) as a view, and counts each additional second as an additional view. If you kept it open then those must be "unregretted seconds", right? And each unregretted second is unique and special and deserves to be enumerated (blech).

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I've really been struggling with promo-ing my newsletter. I haven't tried making videos before, but that's... probably something I should try. Great tips!

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Just so you know, I saw this article (and this Substack by extension) being discussed on Tumblr, and that's how I ended up here.

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I’m never going to use Threads because the formatting requires way too much scrolling. But maybe the problem is that people still need BlueSky codes? If so, here you go

bsky-social-njht-va5lt

bsky-social-il6ht-ndfut

bsky-social-jyehq-wpuvd

bsky-social-l6liw-algq2

bsky-social-2h3vo-ks3hy

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Thanks for the insights. I've stayed off of Threads up to this point, thinking "Ugh. Just another social media channel I have to keep up with," but I'm going to give it a try to see if I get some more traction on my newsletter while meeting other writers and filmmakers. Enjoy reading.

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I also subscribed after clicking through from a tumblr link fwiw

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Howzabout the AI teams put someone on voice commands/recognition so that a machine can actually receive and process a command in less than three attempts

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have you considered posting to cohost or mastodon? i hear people tend to click through on those places.

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Thanks SO MUCH for free posts...

pulled away from the net and all for health issues...

Listening to your thoughts, reviews perspective...

Learned I have missed NOTHING.

Good for you that you have made a career out if this. The hard work you do, the time spent with and on electronics fascinating and explanation of the efforts one must put into this black space of ether...

Means nothing at all...

Thank you, guess one is now an ' outlier'... with your excellent review and commentary...

thank you, I'm good.

Waiting for your next post to confirm, I have no relevance in ether...

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