Logbook

bent out of shape about random people

I wanted to write something on Mastodon in response to something else, but people sometimes get bent out of shape about random people in their mentions. If you don't mention them it's a subtoot and that sounds bad too. If you listen to too many people complain too long, it gets in the way of thinking.

At some point it seems like I should just write something for my blog so it's clear who is at the top of the page. That point is now - you are reading it.

One problem: a mention in a lot of systems is intrusive (you get pinged when I @ you. Don't @ me bro.) Blogs never really had the intrusive @ - back in the day you might go out of your way to get a trackback. Getting your notifications spammed on most social networks is a real problem.

People feel snubbed when their work isn't acknowledged, but they don't necessarily want to be interrupted when you mention them.

cultivating a community in a federated space

Cultivating a community around a product takes time and steady, ongoing effort, plus a measure of institutional support aligned with your work. You are looking to build a small crowd of friendlies, a larger crowd that knows of and nods approvingly when they reference your work, and enough of a digital footprint that you seem to be everywhere that's relevant. That doesn't happen right away - you have to keep working at it, every week and every month, showing up regularly with news or information or other displays of conspicuous competence.

It's harder to do this on federated systems than on centralized ones. You can't just buy ad time or keywords or whatever. You can't just wish that people would discover you, or that you would discover them. Federation means that the audience is where it is, including places that you haven't heard about yet. Somehow your digital visibility needs to overlap with the world's digital viewport, and you have to account for that in your plans.

On the plus side, whatever attention you get is unquestionably "earned media", which marketing people value at a multiple compared to "paid media". Just don't expect that attention will pour in all at once.

Originally posted to Hachyderm in an abbreviated form.

"birdchan"

As seen on Mastodon, to refer to Twitter.