Closed Platforms vs. Your Owned Media

Closed platforms like Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. are great ways to get in front of like-minded people. But you don't own that profile.

Seth Goldstein

Oct 15, 2024 — 10 min read

Photo by Brett Jordan / Unsplash

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I'm very big on open source. Any one who knows me knows that I've been using WordPress for the past 15 years, I love the Fediverse (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Micro.blog, etc.), and I'm a very big proponent of podcasting and blogging.

The main reason isn't as "on the nose" as you would think. Yea I like connecting with others on LinkedIn and all, but there's something about not having to worry about ticking-off the LinkedIn gods and being sent to purgatory until someone, hopefully, lets you back in.

This is why I always tell my clients that participating in the walled gardens of the big giants is great, but you need to also focus on your own properties that YOU CONTROL.

Enter The Blogs & Podcasts

This is where blogs and podcast come in. These mediums are great ways to create content that is owned and controlled by you. You can and should share them to big socials like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, etc. But start where you control the content.

Lately I've seen rumblings that people on Meta/Instagram Threads are getting silenced for having opinions that the big giant company doesn't like. This is horrible and a big reason why I don't put my short form content there as much and focus on Mastodon (etc.), because I don't need these big tech firms telling me what I should write about.

As a business/brand you need to think long a hard about where your content lives FIRST. After that you can focus on distributing it to "Big Social."

What do you think? Let me know in the comments (if you're a subscriber/member of Marketing Junto).

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The Latest From The Blog

Web Jawn

Matt Mullenweg has gone completely insane. Though, I'm not leaving WordPress the open source project, because I believe in the community to rise above this nonsense.

Open source royalty and mad kings

I’m solidly in favor of the Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) model of open source stewardship. This is how projects from Linux to Python, from Laravel to Ruby, and yes, Rails, have kept their cohesion, decisiveness, and forward motion. It’s a model with decades worth of achievements to its name. But it’s not a mandate from heaven. I…

Look, say what you will about DHH, but he makes some great points in his latest post. Matt Mullenweg needs to stop before becoming a "Mad King." I'm afraid it's too late.

Matt's response. It's like watching a tennis match. Shots Fired! Or a game of Battleship.

Britain is giving back the Indian Ocean territory, which means the Dot IO domain technically will disappear. But so many companies, large and small, use .io that I agree with Andrew, that ICANN, the organization that deals with domains, won't let .io disappear. I hope they save it. I think ICANN will keep it running, if they don't it's be a freaking disaster!

This is an important article to read in full. Hyperlinks are how the internet functions, but BIG SOCIAL is making it harder to link out and we're heading back to a closed Web, like AOL was in the 1990s. Yuck!

This is VERY GEEKY, but if you're into technical specifications and how people migrate stuff around the web. Eric Mann's blog post is one to read.

The father of RSS and much of the Web, Dave Winer, has a good piece about WordPress and what's going on.

This is kind of cool. YouTube shorts are going to 3 minutes. Thank God. 1 minute was such a pain. I've always been over by 5 seconds. 🤣

It's coming. SearchGPT! By the end of 2024. I'm intrigued.

A long read, but worth reading.

People are sick of getting laid off. I can't say I blame them.

Insanity! Yet very clever.

This Automattic/WPE nonsense has gone WAY TOO FAR!

A very important read in regards to the Automattic/WPE fight.

Good insights.

A must read.

I love Mike Elgan's take on tech. This is an interesting read.

My views on where I stand with WordPress.

Oh the scandal of AI!

Thank God it's back! Stop messing with the IA you hacking scum!

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Web Finds & Other Good Stuff!

Sign on side of desk quoting Douglas Adams: "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." — Love Douglas Adams! Taken from us way too soon!

That's It For This Week! Keep Rocking It!

-Seth

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