Imagine working on a social media account for 16 years and building 500,000 followers. And overnight have the owner of the company take the username away from you. Without notice.
16 years of branding gone. All of your digital assets have to be updated. Without any compensation. Just a curt support ticket email communicating to you what will be done to you.
You may be thinking, why would anyone invest time on that social media platform to build a following. Why indeed.
But the reality is that everything you put into any social media platform is not yours. It’s not your resume. It’s not your family photo album. It’s not your portfolio, or your scrapbook.
You can lose it all based on a product manager’s roadmap, or the whims of a recalcitrant CEO.
There is an emerging alternative though. And it very well may save the Internet. Returning it back to it’s former decentralized content glory days that were pre-Google.
The Fediverse, specifically the ActivityPub protocol, is something you should keep an eye on. The term is a merge of ‘federated’ and ‘universe’ to describe a collection of social media platforms that can freely exchange content and engagement activity (both ways) with a digital property you own (i.e. a web site).
The promise is that it will allow you to post content in a digital space you own, build a following through multiple social media platforms, and most importantly, bring your community of followers with you if you decide to leave a social media platform.
Until the Fediverse has widespread support, you might want to pause community building on the platform formerly known as Twitter.