Broken Social Media: Anti-Social Sites vs Alternatives
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Some of the so called social media sites are broken and a waste of time. In fact they are not social at all, they are anti-social.
Don’t Waste Your Time – Move On!
You not only waste your time using them you also get viciously attacked, your content deleted or you get banned for no reason.
Many bloggers and influencers still cling to the past where some social sites have been hailed as a democratic Web.
Those hopes have often been disappointed. Anonymous down voting, raging mobs and top down solely profit oriented teams behind the sites have wreaked havoc to our ideals.
Still there are plenty of social sites that work and do not fall into these pitfalls. So whether you want to get popular there or simply contribute just for fun there are much better alternatives.
Facebook vs Twitter
Facebook has deteriorated more and more in recent years:
- fewer users and less activity
- confusing privacy changes
- flooding with baby images
- growing fake news epidemic
and some pushing and shoving in semi-private groups where self-proclaimed experts will attack you for no apparent reason have made this site an Eldorado for the exhibitionists and bullies.
While there are still many genuine users over there and many of them even share good content, they can’t compete with the obnoxious ones making it an annoying place. Just think fake news.
- Do you want social media traffic? Focus on Twitter instead. Here you don’t have to compete with self-righteous gurus. You just see the people who you want to follow in the first place.
- In case you want to go for the links also use Twitter instead. Facebook links do not count in most cases at all for Google as they are private and Google can’t index them.
- Users who are just into sharing news should find their respective niche social news community. Every topic nowadays has at least one such community.
Reddit vs Tumblr
One day I got somewhat popular on Reddit. I got 47 “up” votes and 46 “down” votes. Thus in the end I got “1 point”.
Guess how many referrers I got from Reddit? 4! Four people visited me. It means that at least 42 people voted me down blindly!
OK, I’ve been popular on Reddit a few times and you get some visitors from time to time, even if you have just a small blog like mine. Those visitors do not even look at your site though.
They disappear right away when they see no boobs or something. Reddit has one of the highest bounce rates of all referrers – 94%! Those who really bother to read will just spit on you.
Reddit has one of the most obnoxious crowds, it’s even more vicious than Digg was in the past. They’re infamous for sexism as well, so women keep off.
Tumblr is basically a micro or miniblogging community. It’s a hybrid of WordPress and Twitter in a way.
People follow you and you follow others. Then you “like” their postings or even reblog them. You only read the stuff by the people you like anyway.
Unlike on Reddit you can plainly ignore obnoxious individuals. Tumblr has hugely successful over the years until it got acquired by Yahoo.
SEO is not a popular topic on Tumblr but you’ll find some people from the industry blogging there already.
Tumblr is similar to Reddit when it comes to the topics and media types covered. I go there for the art, photography or cycling stuff.
Hacker News vs Growth Hackers
When I joined Hacker News a decade ago I did it solely for private use. I didn’t submit any of my own articles, not even other people’s resources related to SEO. That was not enough.
I got banned on HN after a few months of regular engagement there with lots of popular stories I’ve shared and plenty of comments I made.
One day they simply muted my account so that nobody could see my posts and comments anymore. The site turned completely anti-social.
The silent ban on HN was very sad but there is a viable alternative for business users and startups in particular and beyond: Growth Hackers.
Growth Hackers is a great community and works for years without losing ground.
While HN was very exclusive and you risked getting reprimanded for posting the “wrong” things GH allows marketing content not perfectly in line with the site owners.
Thus business blogging, conversion optimization or social media publications have better chances to get some eyeballs here.
Niche vs One Size Fits All
Niche social sites in general are an excellent option for early adopters and people who are into socially filtered news.
Disclaimer: Don’t get me wrong if you are a genuine contributing user of one of these above sites I criticize.
You can’t ignore the issues there though. Also you will notice that you can’t change these sites as they are not really democratic in most cases.
Most social media sites are run by profit-oriented companies and you’re their unpaid workforce.
Thus before they sack you like Hacker News did with its highly active users, just use the alternatives.
You can find and follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn or Growth Hackers among others. I’m onreact on most sites.
Do not befriend me just due to the fact that you do SEO or read my blog.
I will only “friend you back” when you’re genuine, contribute in a genuine, share quality content and act like a real friend.
* Creative Commons image by Sara Björk
I’ve all but given up on all of the apart from SU!
SM is too slow loading for me always! Mixx doesn’t get the quality of submissions imho, Sphinn is well too boring! ;) And Digg well!, I still submit i still share and digg but socially not for traffic!
Very interesting post. As you do I think sometimes Social Media its too overated. In my case working on a Ecommerce Site getting social is seeing like Spam, and in the same case as you I found that most visitors aren’t worth the time you spend.
IMO I think StumbleUpon has the best traffic out there.
Excellent Review on Social Media Sites. Good Work and thanks for the update.
DZone is definitely a tough audience. If something gets submitted that doesn’t fit the audience very well, lookout, they’ll speak up.
Tad, interesting post. I dont know if I agree completely with you about all the buzz around digg. Sometimes life is not completely fair.
Sphinn for instance is still a pain in the ass, sometimes I get to the front page they cancel my account, it happened 3 times, its really annoying.
BTW @style time, Sphinn is anything but boring :-),
Cheers
Lucio ribeiro
styletime: Yes, in case you want to choose just one site you should take StumbleUpon. It’s risky though relying only on one.
Federico: First generation social media, especially news and bookmarking does not work as well as expected. Social browsing does though. In future we’ll see much more of that.
Steven: In my case it did fit but the reaction was as described above.
lucio: They banned you at Sphinn? what for?
thank you for sharing to us the alternatives. the post is very informative.
I agree with you. I found stumble upon is much more effective than other social media sites and It also depends on each persons opinion on social media sites. But I don’t feel that spending time in social media sites is waste of time.
Senthil: It depends on which social media site you are speaking of!
I like Digg. I still get most of my traffic from Digg and it ranks well in the SERPS. Although I need to follow your advice and use SU a little better.
Very interesting post. I had no idea that all that conflict was going on in Digg. Might have expected it though. When ever you put two or more humans together you seem to get conflict. That is the joy of the social interaction. So it seems is the lowering of intellectual standards, and the ever growing popularity of human sexuality, and titillation.
So the lesson is…if you want traffic from reddit, why don’t you just put “boobs or something” on your blog? On second thought…
This is an old post, but I am struck that much of it remains true to this day.
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