Network effects
Lately I have been spending too much time in social networks because of a work experiment. I wanted to feel how notifications and emails engage and re-engage me, and how the content itself continues to engage me via recommendations and sponsored content. I even downloaded the Reddit app, although I am not a user, but was too afraid to try TikTok because even Instagram feels too mindless at times. Here is a snippet of what the networks made me feel like.
I have been a user since about 2007 but Facebook no longer has the potential to connect with people, which is a shame. I would love to share the mundanity with the people who are, or once were, a part of my life, but no one visits nor posts, and if they occasionally do, those posts are likely not visible on my feed because of interaction history.
What the feed mainly consists of are group posts, sponsored posts and relatively random (feeling) recommended posts. As a result, the notifications fail to re-engage me because they are not personal. So, altogether not nice, but I assume it is mainly because of poor content and not enough interactions.
- Feeling: Facebook is in the past but the groups functionality has some news service value.
- Curiosity: I always clicked on the “You have a memory” notification.
I am also a long-time Instagram user (meaning I still prefer the square picture format) and have definitely not embraced the Stories model because time-based formats control my time and the content is often recycled. Because I frequent the app so often, I am getting a lot of content from the few meme accounts I follow, which distorts the experience and makes it feel cheaper. Melancholy of the infinite scroll is tangible when two top posts on the feed are from your friends and the rest are from freud.intensifies.
- Feeling: Even though Instagram is the only network where I actually contribute rather than just consume, I feel like a target of advertising in one form or another.
- Curiosity: I am using Instagram wrong being an old-skooler. I always look at the posts first, then refresh and go to the stories. Does not make any sense but shows my priorities.
LinkedIn is kind of a must for many work-related reasons. In the past three years or so LinkedIn has become mostly about professional self-branding with people’s posts ranging from bitesize thought leadership (AI this and that) to carefully curated vulnerabilities (I love my kids or I burned out) but every now and then there is the interesting work-related article that I just need to click. I never associate it with a person though, but maybe the recruiters do.
All this said, for me personally, LinkedIn has also shown the strongest community spirit out of any of the digital networks. Most recent example of this is from last December, when several people from our company were laid off and the network came to the rescue. I assume it is because most of my connections are people I know and worked with, and in general, LinkedIn users can relate to workplace dynamics because it is the same everywhere.
- Feeling: I feel like I fare badly and don’t want to play this game probably because I feel like I fare badly.
- Curiosity: LinkedIn does not send a lot of notifications but they light up the badge, which worked every time for an inbox 0 type like me.
Could not use because could not decide on topics to follow because they were location-pinning me to Germany and offered German keywords and content. Fail.
Saved Twitter as the last thing because the feeling I was left with was not about Twitter as a service but more a sadness about a polarised Finland, which is so visible and amplified on Twitter. Because I don’t live in Finland at the moment, I am not sure if it reflects a lived reality or is just Twitter, but it feels like the beloved Finnish narratives of sisu, Winter War and building your own house are working against at least a part of the population resulting in them becoming unbearably stuffy and self-important. I choose to believe it is not the lived reality but just some trolls trying to make us believe world is awful.
- Feeling: Twitter is melting pot of memes, interesting tidbits and trolls. You have to curate really hard to make the experience good for you.
- Curiosity: Twitter recommends so much based on the interactions in your network (rather than your interactions) that I don’t really need to hit the follow button nor do I know who I follow. It almost feels like the curation is more about blocking.
Afterthoughts
With this experiment, I was trying to find out about certain saturation points, which I succeeded in because all of the networks ended up feeling tiring. I feel like at the end of the day the content is all that matters for continued, habitual engagement and the rest of it are just tricks. Where I don’t have a habit, I do re-engage via notifications if they are interesting and what I found working the best for me were the notifications which informed me about new content that was very personal (e.g. message), I had signed up for (mostly in other services like podcast apps) or recommended content that was very close to my current interests.
The content is bound to feel repetitive at some point especially if it is primarily fuelled by recommendations and advertising. The bubble is real, but it is not helped by the recycling for the sake of visibility. AI tools might unleash a different beast, or just the same one but faster.
It would have been nice to try some of the newer networks but the time investment to making it work seems too big. I did trial the Instagram founders’ new news app Artifact where the notifications actually help me skim the news without even going to the app. Useful, and the interesting content will eventually make me click. However, it is way too early to evaluate the bubbleness of the service. We will see.
