Zach WeinersmithAnyone have a theory on why facebook is basically awful as an artist and insta remains good? Like, on instagram I have 10% as many followers, but posts get 10 to 100x the engagement? Yet, both are run by the same villain. What gives?
Pierrec@ZachWeinersmith I'd say Instagram is precisely used by a lot of people to follow artists. While Facebook is used to keep in touch with friends and events (when used)
xrvs@Pierrec @ZachWeinersmith also instagram timeline is more or less chronological iirc. on fb, with forced timeline algorithm, posts can be pushed down and be missed for unknown reasons
Patrick Johanneson đ đ¨đŚ@ZachWeinersmith Different subteams of minions. The villain sits at the top, but he delegates to different squads.
benmcramer@ZachWeinersmith different algorithms prioritizing different types of content
John Cutting@ZachWeinersmith
That's a good question... I don't have an answer for you other than musing that people self-select to IG for visual content... but I'm curious what percentage of your engagement comes from these social platforms inside of directly going to your site. I started reading SMBC around 2005, and I prefer going to your website.
(This post brought to you by nostalgia for that version of the internet where people simply had websites and we didn't have to go on to these giant platforms.)
@ZachWeinersmith
*Instead of
*Instead of
ShaneIsGames@ZachWeinersmith I keep hearing that Facebook's userbase skews significantly older than other platforms, I wonder if that could be part of it.
nilmethod@ZachWeinersmith probably how well the insta interface manages to get people to scroll endlessly. It's just slightly different from the Facebook interface, though they seem to be converging more every day. I'd wager that increased scrolling leads to more opportunities for engagement.
Warner Crocker@ZachWeinersmith As a species we prefer pics (and videos) to words is my guess.
]colemankane[
@ZachWeinersmith Because they are still largely run as independent services (that may share some advertising, storage, and identity management back-end components). But remember that #Instagram was later acquired by #Facebook after its success. They bought it, but it doesn't make sense to rip out what made it uniquely successful and replace it with just the internals of Facebook - because then it would just be another direct Facebook competitor and have zero value to Meta.
Jon_Alper@ZachWeinersmith Theory - The younger (<50) demographic has come to see Facebook as âfor the oldsâ and a cesspool of political polarization. The same demographic are fine supporting the same evil org that enabled the former because âpicturesâ.
Chuck Munson@ZachWeinersmith I think part of it is a reason that is kind of old school and one is demographics of the platform. I'm an older artist and I find that my age peers don't use Facebook as much. FB fills my feed with "Suggested for You" crap. The main reason, IMHO, is that Instagram exposes your posts more to the general public, instead of your insular FB silo. As an artist, you want that public exposure on social media or IRL (shows, exhibitions, studio tours).
PigmyWurm@ZachWeinersmith my Facebook feed these days seems to be 90% sponsored/boosted content, often from the same few groups (who I don't follow). I assume Instagram is better at actually letting you followers see your content.
Daniel Hakimi@ZachWeinersmith Mostly because nobody uses facebook. Everybody has one and nobody checks it anymore. Also because people use facebook to follow their friends. Back when I did use facebook, every page I liked, I unfollowed, because I have zero interest in seeing a business or an artist mixed up with my friends' vacation photos and my cousins' baby photos. On IG, I have separate accounts for following different things.
Helge@ZachWeinersmith Instagram is written in Python, and Zuck doesn't have enough Python experts to figure out how to shittify it as quickly as Facebook.
Philomorph@ZachWeinersmith I mean, FB is used mostly by idiots, so maybe that's why?
David@ZachWeinersmith different leadership orgs with different advertisement models. Basically Instagram leadership have a better idea of how to keep their users happy while also keeping advertisers happy.
Soliyra (she/they)@ZachWeinersmith sounds like you're one of the lucky ones that IG actually likes. Lots of artists are getting throttled.
Jorge Villalobos@ZachWeinersmith Just like Pixar released lots of good stuff for a while after Disney acquired it. It takes a really long time for parent companies to assimilate their acquisitions. The really smart ones try hard not to change the culture of their sub-companies, and Zuck is probably in that group.
Lebkin@ZachWeinersmith Most people I know follow multitudes more people on Facebook than on Instagram. Itâs the âconnect with family and friendsâ platform. So I imagine itâs far easier for your content to never surface on Facebook.
Cole Brodine@ZachWeinersmith My personal experience is that I only use Facebook to communicate with Family members and community organizations which can't/won't run a website of their own or join other platforms. I am on Instagram and used to use it to follow artists, organizations, etc (i.e. People I don't personally know, but want to see stuff from)
I'm not really using Insta much lately because I uninstalled it to force myself to use Mastodon and Pixelfed more. I don't want to support Instagram.
pruwyben@ZachWeinersmith Facebook is older; enshittification takes time.
*_jßyrope@Zach Weinersmith What's left of FB is family and friends, what' left of Insta is images without much text or links to the outside world, so i guess for me both are as useless as it can get. It's quite good right here i find, and without much commercially driven user data violations, too. As long as i keep threads.net blocked, of course.
blabaere@ZachWeinersmith FB was created by the villain, earning enough money to buy IG, which he had to because that's where everyone was fleeing?
Jason Robinson@ZachWeinersmith I think in partâŚ
facebook is about friending âpeople you knowâ (which doesnât lead to good art), while insta is fundamentally about âfollowing people with interesting picsâ (which does).
fundamental difference in your relationship to those you follow, or who follow you.
David Chartier@ZachWeinersmith @dgoldsmith People like looking at pretty things and Insta is a simpler, more focused product. People know (almost) exactly what they'll get when they go there.
Flat Pluto Society@ZachWeinersmith User expectations, I would think. I go to Instagram specifically for content like comics and other visually-oriented media, whereas I go to Facebook mostly to alienate my family by making all-caps posts about how soy milk and pronouns are tools of the devil.