How important is it for community members to be able to share between platforms?
2023 has been a wild one in social media. New platforms launching, existing ones scrapping for users, and features added and removed as they all try to stay relevant.
It brings up a classic debate: walled gardens or interoperability? The Apple or Microsoft model? Ultimately, what’s the best way to ‘win’: limit members’ ability to share between platforms, or extend it?
It was recently reported that Xitter has been de-boosting - or forcibly slowing - the load time for links to Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, Substack, The New York Times, and Reuters. One read is that this is part of an effort to make X an everything app, one that serves many functions and reduces users’ reliance on other platforms. Another is that it’s about control.
Twitch, on the other hand, has just announced that its streamers can now ‘simulcast’, or send a livestream to both Twitch and its competitors at the same time, so long as they aren’t bound to an exclusivity agreement. Great for streamers on Twitch, but does it run the risk of them becoming less dependent on the platform?
At Just About, we know where we stand. The inter-connectivity of platforms is fundamental to ours, with bounties encouraging you to share media you may have stored on other platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube among others. This is why we encourage you to connect your social media accounts to your profile.
We recently implemented JAutoMod, a moderation tool that scans and checks links out to other platforms, but it’s only there to ensure their safety, not to restrict or ‘de-boost’ them.
We chose our position because we plan to thrive by offering the best damn user experience of any platform out there, and we’re pretty sure you folks will prefer it this way. But are we wrong about that? Or are we missing a compelling business case for the walled garden model? By allowing inter-operability, are we making members happy but dooming ourselves to irrelevance?
Let us know what you think!
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