Return to Blip, or developing my PIE
(Photo – Nigel Wade https://www.flickr.com/photos/nigeljohnwade/1895521126/)
A few posts back I talked about how, since the demise of Twitter, we are all forced to make more finely tuned decisions about our social media platforms. The one-size-fits-all approach that Twitter presented is no longer viable, so we have to select from a wide range of options for particular purposes. I jokingly called this the PEE (Personal Engagement Environment), but a couple of readers suggested the better acronym of PIE (Personal Interaction Environment). I love a PIE, so let’s go with that.
Now that I am semi-retired, and I have no interest in playing golf and don’t own a yacht, I have been embarking upon a number of interest projects, which have caused me to develop and consider the choices in my PIE more closely. Here are some of those choices and projects:
Blipfoto – I used to be a regular on the photo community site Blipfoto, but I switched to Instagram back in 2018. However, I wanted to document my first year of post-OU life, so I resurrected my Blipfoto account. It encourages you to share one photo a day, so is ideal for journalling. I’m not really trying to build a network with this journal, I could do it on my own hard drive, but the platform acts as a nice prompt. What I like about it is that it’s not trying to pivot to video, it is fairly small scale, open licensed and not at all aggressive in its marketing (I don’t think there are any users under 40 on there).
Instagram – a fun, vanity, middle-aged man project I started was to take pictures of selections from my vinyl collection while out walking my dog. This encourages me to do a weekly hike and also introduces me to a different community. In contrast to Blipfoto, for this I did want to make connections, and to find other interesting accounts. I like seeing what others are sharing and discussions around music. It’s generally a welcoming community and one that’s very distinct from the ed tech world. I also maintain my personal Instagram account, mainly for connecting with friends.
Threads/Blog – another project I’ve been playing with over the summer is to delve into analytics for ice hockey. Look, I didn’t buy a motorcycle or any other mid-life crisis stuff, so vinyl and sports analytics are my substitute ok? I want this to be read and would like discussion, partly because I’m not sure of what I’m doing and partly because I think it will lead to interesting topics. For this venture I am entirely unsure what medium is best. Newsletter? Podcast? I’ve gone for a blog with associated Threads account, but there is scant interaction on Threads on any topic I can see.
Blog/Newsletter – I still maintain this blog at the rate of a post a week and the associated newsletter. I see that as the basis of my online identity.
Mastodon – I don’t know what I want from this really. That is not a criticism of the platform, I’m just not sure what my intention for it is. Unlike the vinyl, journal and analytics where I have a specific aim, I don’t know what the audience or content is that I want to develop over on Mastodon. I mainly use it as self-promotion for blog posts, which isn’t very social of me. I’m thinking of switching to Bluesky for more general social interaction.
LinkedIn – for maintaining my professional identity and connections, keeping abreast of developments, as well as promoting my own stuff and that of others, LinkedIn is pretty useful even if I kind of hate it. There is a definite purpose and aspect of my life that it is suited for.
There’s probably not much that’s insightful in that list and the associated reasoning but I’m finding it useful to monitor my social media landscape shifts post-Twitter. It will be interesting to revisit in a year or so and see if any of these have withered and new ones have replaced them.
One Comment
Eric Likness
I know there’s a feeling STILL that nobody really “knows” what Mastodon is good for. But the more time I’ve spent on there following people and reading threads/comments, the more people I follow. I feel like if you spend some time each day, like dog walks, you will find more people there commenting. One of Jim Groom’s colleagues at Mary Washington is now finally after a year or more dipping toes in to Mastodon has re-engineered, re-allocated the attention so Mastodon time is better spent.Andy Rush! @andyrush@mastodon.social
I can tell Andy was a little fertive, wary, worried there was no one there nothing going on. But there is, each day a migration, and more people fleeing into Mastodon.