Fleeing From Social Media

Union Station, Washington, DC

Social media was suppose to be "all things to all people." Its promise was to be an avenue of access for everyone to to have access to everyone else. The lure was for everyone to have a voice and be able to express themselves. But then it became its own worst nightmare.

For early adopters it was like being able to walk around the town square listening to whoever was speaking, singing; looking at the sidewalk art and performers. It was the place to make yourself known for your message, art, politics, philosophy, etc. The atmosphere was more like a Renaissance Fair than livestock auction. The free exchange of ideas and culture became overshadowed by the sellers and professional advertisers. Every message was "brought to you by" some other paid entity. In short, the fun became serious. The content became business. The debate and exchange of ideas became propaganda. Information became co-mixed with disinformation. 

Crevices and and cracks formed and the entire system fractured into a million disparate parts which each participant has to choose among, one faction or the other, but never again parts of a whole.

Elon Musk did not start the decline with his purchase and rebranding of Twitter as X. His activities did, however, push the envelope in the downward trajectory. Facebook began with people who knew each other "writing on each other's walls." They shared their pictures, thoughts and activities (publicly) but ostensibly to known people. Soon the contact lists grew and people became friends and acquaintances by merely seeing what the people shared. It was not long before the idea of injecting ones message into a group of strangers dialog. This is precisely what advertisers do. Advertisers though have a product or service to sell. The messaging itself became the purpose of the injection.

Cutting to the chase, as they say, a lot of social media users have become disenchanted with the direction all the medial platforms have taken. They all operate in the same fashion. The original purpose of the electronic forums have been co-opted by forces which ruin its appeal.

Where once there was civility and amicable sharing there is now vitriol, argument, disinformation and objectionable content. Individual users must moderate and censor their neighborhoods. The media companies contend with the need to deplatform abusive participants. Deplatformed users cry foul and claim CENSORSHIP and violation of their rights. All of this negativity drives away users who came to be part of a community and not be bombarded by interlopers and trespassers who seek to disrupt rather than participate.

Early in 2023 I subscribed to a photosharing platform, ClickaSnap.com in order to develop exposure for my photography. Generally it has been a pleasant experience. There has been a small level of sharing taking place where I can see other users photos and they can see mine. Generally, the people who have viewed my work have been anonymous non-subscribers and subscribers who are themselves trying to gain exposure. Out of 1568 subscribers who saw at least one of my photos 1162 have visited only once. The vast majority only looked at one photo. 406 subscribers came back twice or more times with 2x being the most common. 125 visited 2 to 9 times and 189 visited 10 or more times.

Due to ClickaSnap platform policy, people entering from outside the platform via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et al, were not included in the notifications and therefore are anonymous even though they represented 40% of all views of photographs. All in all, viewership by regular ClickaSnap subscribers has been the smaller source of viewers.

As dissatisfaction with social media users for their chosen platforms reduces their ranks and activity so has the external viewership of [Lens4anEye] ClickaSnap decreased. 

This is not a criticism of ClickaSnap but rather a call to Clicksnap subscribers to become more active and for external (non-scribers) to opt to subscribe and become directly active in the micro environment of this image sharing platform. 

It costs nothing to subscribe. Subscribers are not required to share any photographs. However, being logged in allows the subscriber to Like and Comment on the images they see. By becoming a subscriber the person joins with other people who enjoy seeing the myriad photographs from all around the world. Some pictures are by newbies, amateurs and professional photographers alike. most importantly, the entire site is accessible to everyone.

As the big social platforms increased their user base into the billions of users, they reached a point where it became untenable to connect every one to everyone else. The initialization of connectivity relies of two modes. One is the Ask and the other is the Push. A user can ask to be included in a forum and be part of the dialog. The other comes as the result of the Ask. The platform server facilitates the Push of content to those who asked to receive it. The Push also includes the content which has been paid for to be sent. 

In the case of the paid content, the platform is perfectly willing to include as many recipients as the advertiser has paid for. They are not as willing to push content out to every one who requested it. The platforms have algorithms to decide those numbers. After all, if the recipients are not seeing and responding to what they have pushed at them, then why waste bandwidth pushing it to more. With more engagement comes more recipients getting the content. It's just business sense.

Clickasnap says they don't use algorithms to limit exposure. But then they don't actively push content to their subscribers either. Having access to another subscriber's photos is a matter of Following their profiles but still having to actively go look at the Feed. A very few images and even fewer individual subscribers get their content highlighted in the opening home page of the site where people must login. 

Subscribers are left to expose their imagery in external platforms and websites and point viewers INTO the ClickaSnap universe. The level of generic visitation by non-subscribers into the platform is left as a big unknown. It may be huge, mediocre or minimal. The management doesn't publish such information. What this means is each subscriber who seeks participation by unknown viewers must create the traffic themselves.

More non-subscribers need to convert to subscribers. More viewers need to keep track of of profiles they wish to engage with on a regular basis. They need to be able to link directly into the desired profiles. I, for one, keep a hot link list of every profile which engages with my profile along with a summary of their activity. That way I can decide who is worthy of a return visit. The Followers/Following list available via the About: Followers/Following links does give one-click access to all the profiles one follows but nothing regarding their level of activity or what type of pictures they post. The other limitation is that list is only available to subscribers.

The environment that ClickaSnap needs is one where it is a highly recognized sharing platform which random people choose to visit, find a place in which to interact and be social about photography. Even today, with several Facebook groups with "ClickaSnap" in their names, there is negligible engagement with what any subscriber posts. There is no community.

In other Facebook Groups in which I post images and album links I can get several hundred different people viewing a dozen images. This doesn't happen in every FB group, but it barely even happens within the ClickaSnap universe. I'm just saying: there is no real engagement among subscribers. Most activity is driven INTO ClickaSnap. We as subscribers are responsible for the lack of engagement. 

ClickaSnap is responsible for the lack of external engagement. Maybe it is imminent in the overall marketing strategy. The long term success of this platform depends on it reaching the status of a major platform the people know to go to.

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• Everyone can view my photographs at ClickaSnap.  Only subscribers
  can Like and Comment.
• ClickaSnap offers Free subscriptions which is (currently) necessary for
  purchasing images.
• Currently, payment through ClickaSnap is only available via PayPal.
• Non-subscribers can email to Lens4anEye@ModalChoice.com and use
  PayPal, Venmo, Zelle or CashApp.
• Downloads via email are $5 USD.
• Creating a Free subscription is the better method of purchasing.

 

Photos are copyright by Robert Carlson. Most are available for purchase for personal use. Email Lens4anEye@modalchoice.com for commercial licensing.