Twitter is in full on Elon-fueled, alt-right, neo nazi, incel mode these days, and things like search and trending are completely screwed over, delivering completely irrelevant results.
So a bunch of other social media options have opened up. Only one, out of the gate, has anything remotely like the engagement that used to exist on Twitter, but unfortunately, a) it’s owned by Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, and b) it has Instagram’s craptacular feed algorithm, so you’ll see lots of paid influencers and celebs you probably do not want to see at all.
That, of course, is Threads. Only two days old as of this writing, and already I’ve seen a half dozen paid influencer advertpostings in the thread stream. Just two days in. The worst kind too – the bubblehead type who flashes some skin and then promotes some weird product. And lots of b list celebs who I could not possibly care less about.
But… there is already a coffee and espresso community posting on Threads, out of the gate. Way more than I can say there is on any of the other platforms that have popped up. Here’s a few
Post.News. I quite like the idea and purpose behind Post. News driven, facts driven, content creation in long form. You can even microblog and get micropayments for your content. Problem is, it’s active user base is probably less than 200,000 people (I’d be surprised if a million have signed up). There’s also a) no coffee or espresso community there at all, and b) not even many soccer fans, the world’s most popular sport.
Also, notifications really don’t work on the platform, there’s no Android app, and comments on posts are handled by a third party software plugin.
On the plus side, there’s no limit to post sizes and you can format posts somewhat, including inline hyperlinks, bold, italics, etc.
Spoutible is by a guy who really, really hates Elon Musk. It had some serious promise, but a lot of stuff is broken on Spoutible:
- Display Cards don’t render correctly
- Notifications are really slow and do not display correctly
- Threading is janky
There’s also no coffee or espresso community on there, and unless you’re going on tirades against Elon, engagement is really low.
Mastodon is… just a kind of geek out clusterfuck. It’s one of those things that geeknerds go ‘it’s like, the simplest thing ever!!!!” and normals go “I can’t figure any of this out. You want me to do what, on what site, and hit this import, and that export, and figure this setting out, and import those, etc? Dude, I just want to post a photo of the shot of espresso I just drank!”
Mastodon is just too geek oriented to take off with the normals. It’s like using Windows vs. Linux.
BlueSky is another platform run by an asshole billionaire. Namely Jack, from Twitter founding. It’s also very limited in terms of its abilities (you can’t post video, for example, or hashtag), and it was like, the hot thing for all of 3 days when Elon decided to limit the number of tweets you could see on the Tweeter. Then Threads launched, and everyone abandoned Bluesky.
Even during the height of its 3 days of popularity, no active coffee or espresso community. I couldn’t even find MLS or CPL soccer fans. It’s also invite only, and even if you applied for an invite 3 months ago, they aren’t sending them out that way. They were trying to be a “cool kids klub” with invite shares, but the Threads launch killed all of that.
Then there’s Threads. Its connection to Instagram meant instantly, 100 million people signed on within 48 hours. The active coffee and espresso community is already posting to threads. Companies that wouldn’t dare go to Mastodon, Spoutible, Post.news, or Bluesky have already posted on Threads.
Problem is, the algorithm is horrible and shows you a bunch of b-list celebs and influencers hawking their crappy paid for products. No hashtags either. Heck, no way to delete your Threads account without also deleting your IG account. Also no web browser interface.
And it’s owned by Zuckerberg. A guy I trust less than Elon. Heck. I trust him less than Circus Clown.
