Social media Platform other than IG?

Georgios Christopoulos

Hello guys!

Does anybody has any suggestion for a social media platform other than IG, Facebook, tik tok or Artfoil?
With the current algorithm going in a direction that does not favor images so much, I think we should be looking for an image oriented platform to use. And maybe get there when it is still early or something.

Artfoil was looking promising but It is so laggy to me. Can't even function and I don't know why.

Anyways if you have a suggestion or a thought share it!

George.

Melissa_Bailey

@Georgios-Christopoulos there's a buzz going around that Pinterest might become the best platform for image-based posts. I've heard that it's growing in popularity with authors and illustrators. Might be worth checking out.

If you're looking for work in publishing, Twitter is really popular with art directors and editors.

StudioLooong

@Georgios-Christopoulos There is a very strong kidlit community on twitter and they've recently improved their image posts so that single images don't crop so strangely.

Make sure to look into live twitter chat events like #Kidlitart and #PBChat. Participating in things like this really boosts your visibility.

Coreyartus

I've been exploring Mastodon.art as an alternative. It's a unique platform with a very much smaller reach than the social media alternatives we currently use, but I like the small pond aesthetic. It's a much more international membership. Mastodon has several "servers" of different interests operated by different people (.art is helmed by a woman from Wales who lives in South Africa)--it's hard to explain.

Pixelfed.com is in that same type of "federated" pool of sites, and it's very like Instagram but with a much much smaller user-base.

I've also been looking into Ello.co, which seems to be more graphic design and art-oriented than most platforms, but again the user base is pretty small.

Vero.co has a very stylish user interface, but some may balk at the ownership. MeWe.com seemed to have come and gone very quickly?

To be honest, it seems that a lot of folks are moving their social interactions to a variety of Discords based on who they follow or the nature of those communities. Most of my own social interactions are happening on some very tight-knit individual artist community hubs and I share on the normal social media platforms as a matter of course now, and not because I'm expecting to grow or develop reach or people will find me.

I think perhaps we are witnessing a sea change from using social media as a tool for developing growth and exposure through broad expansive reach to something different. I have to wonder if we might need to start contemplating methods for reaching others that don't necessarily rely upon the social media mechanism. I don't know what that looks like, but it's clear that the current state of most platforms (and social media in general) isn't going to render the results it has in the past. Much of our understanding of being successful artists and illustrators is defined by having a strong and fruitful social media presence, but when that's not possible anymore what does that mean? I wonder if we're going to figure all that out very soon...

carlianne

@Georgios-Christopoulos I've also heard good things about Behance? Though I don't really understand how to use Pinterest or Behance in a social way.

@Georgios-Christopoulos Yes I would second Pixelfed and Mastodon or the other Fediverse projects.

PixelFed is closer to an instagram-alternative, while Mastodon is closer to a Twitter-alternative, if one were forced to make direct comparisons to the current mainstream platforms.

No more pandering to algorithms created for the benefit of for-profit Big Tech oligopolies as your timeline is purely chronological, plus, speaking for Mastodon in particular, since PixelFed is still slightly less mature and feature-rich, it offers better tools than the mainstream platforms for curating your experience such as different levels of visibility for your posts, lists for organizing your feed, filters, blocks, content warnings etc. Also the moderators tend to be way way more responsive than any customer support from XX Big Tech company would ever be. (Have you ever tried contacting customer support on Instagram? Now compare that with Mastodon.art's moderator, Curator, who typically responds within minutes).

The community feeling on Fediverse projects tends to be much stronger than on any of the mainstream Big Tech platforms. Whether that can continue to be maintained with the influx of new users fleeing mainstream platforms remains to be seen (incidentally, a lot of users fled to Mastodon from Twitter after Musk announced his buy-over, and lots of Chinese users fled to Mastodon from their mainstream social media sites like Weibo/Douban etc following increasing government censorship and control on those platforms), but things seem cool so far.

Your audience might be smaller compared to IG, but interactions are way more human and real there.

Also the way FB began putting fences around their platforms to force everyone to be logged in to be able to view other people's posts leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. When people use FB to post about and register attendance for events etc., or when I want to look through someone's work on IG and hit a login fence, it's totally off-putting.

But you will have no issues browsing Pixelfed or Mastodon accounts even without an account, for eg.:

https://pixelfed.social/jq
https://pixelfed.social/coreyartus (I hope you don't mind @Coreyartus !)
https://pixelfed.social/laszlo

To add on to give a more balanced view on those Fediverse platforms, it's obviously not all rainbows and roses, there are some other downsides other than the smaller (albeit growing) user base:

The terminology and conceptual model might be confusing for non-technical users. People might blank out on words like "federated network", "instances", "nodes" etc. All technically accurate descriptors of how the thing works, but not the most user-friendly, especially when most people are used to treating tech as a blackbox. But Mastodon for example have improved their documentation now so that it's less confusing for new users to onboard and get started.
Some projects may not be as mature or feature-rich as their mainstream equivalents, and some instances may not be well-maintained. For example, PixelFed, while a good enough replacement of IG for me, does have pieces lacking, a big one being the lack of ability to import data from IG or to migrate data from one PixelFed instance to another, meaning you have to manually re-post your stuff. (Actually they used to have an "import data from IG" feature, but it broke because of changes on IG's side). Also, the first PixelFed instance I chose was a small-ish one and I began to notice that its uptime was quite poor, so I had to jump ship (and re-post my stuff)

And of course you will have to figure out how to rebuild your following on a new platform (but this applies regardless to whatever new platform you choose to jump to)

Melissa_Bailey

@Georgios-Christopoulos guess I should have asked this at the outset before giving recommendations: what are you looking for in a social media platform?

Is it to connect with fellow creators?

Build a following?

Grow your business?

Get found for work (publishing, editorial, commissions, etc.)?

Connect with art directors and editors?

The motivation behind looking for a social media platform influences which is the best fit for you, and has a direct bearing on the recommendations we'll give you here.

Rebecca Jensen

@Georgios-Christopoulos Personally, I plan to put most of my "content generating" time toward a blog which folks can subscribe to over e-mail or with an app like Feedly (maybe RSS feeds will make a comeback after folks being so unhappy with social media?). I can still copy bits of the blog over to the social media platform "of the moment". The main downside is that it does lack the "discovery" aspect that social media platforms were supposed to provide... but whatever platform you're on, I think it's best to direct people toward a little bit of internet real estate that you fully control.

Coreyartus

@Rebecca-Jensen I anticipate RSS feeds will indeed become popular again. They are much more advanced now than they used to be. With some additional tools, I think you can curate your own social media feeds, too, not just get website updates.