Social networks
The Imagined Audience
Before you post anything — a photograph, a joke, a complaint about a train — you write it for someone. Not everyone. Someone. A face, or a small blur of faces, hovers at the edge…
Section
Social networks
Social networks
Followers Versus Reach and Why the Numbers That Impress You Don't Matter
For most of social media's history, one number ruled them all: the follower count. It was the headline metric, the thing people bragged about and brands paid for, the closest soci…
Social networks
Why Every Social Platform Is Slowly Turning Into the Same App
Open any social media app today and squint, and a strange thing happens: they start to look identical. There is a vertical feed of short videos. There are stories that vanish afte…
Social networks
The Real Conversation Quietly Moved to Group Chats
For most of the social media era, the public feed was where the action was. If something happened, it happened out loud — posted, shared, argued over in the open, visible to anyon…
Social networks
The Movement to Build Social Media No Single Company Can Own
For two decades, social media has meant handing your identity, your audience, and your archive to a private company and hoping it behaves. Every follower you gained, every post yo…
Social networks
The Quiet Exodus From X and the Rise of Bluesky and Threads
For more than a decade, one platform sat at the centre of the public conversation. If something happened, it happened on Twitter first. That monopoly on the real-time pulse of the…
Social networks
Almost Three Years After the Twitter-to-X Rebrand — What Has Actually Changed for Marketers
The rebrand from Twitter to X took effect on 23 July 2023. The blue bird disappeared from the navigation bar overnight, replaced by a stylised black X, and almost everyone in soci…
Social networks
Designed to Hook: The Meta Verdict and the Gambling Addiction Hiding Inside the Same Algorithm
A Los Angeles jury said Meta and YouTube engineered apps to addict children. Step away from the courtroom and the same engineering is doing something even more lucrative — and har…