{"id":12084,"date":"2023-07-12T09:58:44","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T13:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/?p=12084"},"modified":"2023-07-12T09:58:44","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T13:58:44","slug":"social-media-is-there-a-social-network-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2023\/07\/12\/social-media-is-there-a-social-network-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media: Is there a social network for me?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:672,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/stratechery.com\\\/2023\\\/threads-and-the-social-communications-map&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20250502032601\\\/https:\\\/\\\/stratechery.com\\\/2023\\\/threads-and-the-social-communications-map\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-03 16:57:18&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-25 10:58:35&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-02 10:50:23&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-12 11:44:41&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-20 20:29:50&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-29 04:19:29&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-02 21:22:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-20 14:01:17&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-27 00:12:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-09 20:41:32&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-20 04:22:56&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 02:16:46&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-05 02:16:46&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stratechery.com\/2023\/threads-and-the-social-communications-map\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stratechery\u2019s Social\/Communications Map of 2023<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img  loading=\"lazy\"  decoding=\"async\"  style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\"  title=\"threads-6.png.png\"  src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABAQMAAAAl21bKAAAAA1BMVEUAAP+KeNJXAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAAAlwSFlzAAAOxAAADsQBlSsOGwAAAApJREFUCNdjYAAAAAIAAeIhvDMAAAAASUVORK5CYII=\"  alt=\"Threads 6 png\"  width=\"640\"  height=\"447\"  border=\"0\"  class=\" pk-lazyload\"  data-pk-sizes=\"auto\"  data-pk-src=\"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/threads-6.png.png\" ><\/p>\n<p>I sit squarely in top left and have for over a decade. Joining Facebook in 2005 and Twitter in 2007, I had stopped using those networks completely by 2012. I found that my life outside of Facebook and Twitter wasn\u2019t as rich and fulfilling as it should be and I was wasting too much time thinking about my personal brand instead of living my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Since 2012, I have joined Mastodon (a self-hosted instance) but it\u2019s not my first Micro-Blog. I have self-hosted a few micro blogging engines since then like Koken and very simplified WordPress installs. Mastodon is great because for $5 a month, people can follow my blog but I also have access to a mobile application which is something I never had with those other engines that was designed around short test posts.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Blogs are always going to be near and dear to my heart and all of my social networking takes place on forums, yes self-hosted forums about different topics like cars, trucks, motorcycles, computers, photography and more. I\u2019m active in 5 forums and lurk in about 15. Forums are great. I am myself \u201cAdamChandler\u201d and don\u2019t hide behind an alias and what it does for me mentally is to put myself into the mode where I want to talk about Volkswagen turbocharged engines and I can spend some time reading and interacting with others on that topic. I don\u2019t go to any off-topic forums, I sort of budget my time for an hour a day of social interactions virtually on specific subjects.<\/p>\n<p>I use messaging (via Google Voice) and have roughly 5-6 people I engage with once a month. Yes, that\u2019s it. My wife and I talk daily, Ben and I speak weekly and my parents once a month. I have Chris and Matt who I speak with maybe monthly but not always.<\/p>\n<p>Reddit I treat like a forum. I don\u2019t browse \/all, \/popular or \/home. I go to specific subreddits about Coffee, Volkswagen, New Hampshire, Charlotte, Apple, Programming, Journalism, Wine and others and I spend a fixed amount of time reading and replying to folks.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Note, I don\u2019t subscribe to any email newsletters. Email to me is a special and heavily curated place where I unsubscribe to everything that is an auto-mailer, filter out images and HTML and when I get an email, it\u2019s a push notification to my watch and I usually read and reply to it instantly even when I was getting hundreds of emails a day for work, I treat email as a top priority. To bring \u2018newsletters\u2019 into my safe zone would destroy my attentiveness I give emails. I take days to respond to a Google Voice text message but emails are instant. I know Feedbin (which is what I\u2019m using for RSS hosting) supports newsletters but now it\u2019s just a matter of principle. Just start a blog. Seriously. I know why people publish newsletters but they should cross-post to a blog.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Stepping back, I am squarely in the top left quadrant. I do have a Mastodon account but it\u2019s still for me a micro-blog, not a social network. I also have an instagram account for motorcycle pictures but I don\u2019t follow anyone and don\u2019t have the app installed. I use a social media tool for scheduling photo posts.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So despite being \u201canti-social\u201d in almost every way, I still want a social network. Honestly, Meta\u2019s Threads could be it but the reason it\u2019s not is they inject posts from people you don\u2019t follow and they serve up advertisements. The reason I use RSS and non-HTML emails is because I don\u2019t want to see ads. I don\u2019t see them\u2026ever. I pay for Reddit Premium so I don\u2019t see ads. Not giving me the option to remove ads means I\u2019ll never use your service.\u00a0<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>So is there a network out there that includes people interesting sharing their honest selves using their real first and last names through some verification tool like uploading a photo of their ID with zero \u201cmean people \/ trolls\u201d that is a pay-for service without advertisements that includes the ability for me to share photos, videos, posts (long and short) and has functionality like RSS, uses web standards and has an API so app developers can build tools and environments on top including (like reddit and forums), special interest groups where folks of similar interests get together to talk about model trains or 3D printing?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t think there is. Meta and Twitter for sure won\u2019t build it. Mastodon is purely Micro Blogging.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not unhappy with my social network usage, nor do I have more time for another but I really would like a service that has everything above but it just doesn\u2019t exist and it certainly won\u2019t have over a billion people using it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stratechery\u2019s Social\/Communications Map of 2023: I sit squarely in top left and have for over a decade. Joining&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-social-media","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-38U","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12449,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2025\/01\/14\/my-relationship-with-micro-blogging-and-its-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":12084,"position":0},"title":"My Relationship with Micro Blogging and Its Future","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"January 14, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I joined Twitter back in 2006 and until 2010, had tweeted about 20,000 times a year before closing my account. Deleting Twitter and Facebook in 2011 are still some of my proudest technological decisions I\u2019ve made because well..history has certainly reinforced why. I\u2019ve still been really hungry for a short-form\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Social Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Social Media","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/social-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12514,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2025\/02\/14\/okay-micro-blog-is-really-freaking-awesome\/","url_meta":{"origin":12084,"position":1},"title":"Okay, Micro.blog is really freaking awesome!","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"February 14, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I joined Micro.blog many years ago around the time Manton Reece announced public access to the site following a successful crowdfunding campaign but I never used it. Micro.blog arrived around the time Mastodon and the concept of Federation came around but it took years for these networks to see resurgence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11771,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2023\/01\/09\/my-own-little-elephant-self-hosting-mastodon-follow-along\/","url_meta":{"origin":12084,"position":2},"title":"My Own Little Elephant, self-hosting Mastodon &#8211; Follow Along","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"January 9, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"If you really care about your data, you should host it yourself. Despite all of the talk this week about folks liberating their blogging that used to take place on Twitter, everyone just jumped ship over to more servers owned by other people. It\u2019s something that was a little surprising.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7550,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2018\/08\/22\/inessential-real-life-in-seattle\/","url_meta":{"origin":12084,"position":3},"title":"inessential: Real Life in Seattle","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"inessential: Real Life in Seattle: And now that we\u2019re all replacing Twitter with other things for our social needs \u2014 with Mastodon for some people, Micro.blog for some (including me), Slack, Snapchat, plus falling back to the usual things like blogs and texting and email \u2014 we should remember that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6930,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/07\/19\/linked-mastodon-social-is-an-open-source-twitter-competitor-thats-growing-like-crazy\/","url_meta":{"origin":12084,"position":4},"title":"Linked: &#8220;Mastodon.social is an open-source Twitter competitor that\u2019s growing like crazy&#8221;","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"via The Verge: To fund the project, Rochko set up a Patreon account, which is currently paying him about $1,000 a month. 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Are you ready to take action and destroy the empire of capitalist billionaires that are on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}