Okay, the pizza’s not in the oven yet, but I’ve been thinking about stuff and thought I’d write about it. I’ve been thinking about blogging and social media. Lately, I’ve been hearing complaints about WordPress (WP) from other bloggers, but that’s nothing compared to the complaining about other social media platforms like Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter. Just add whatever platform you use to the mix and the complaints are plentiful. Personally I don’t use much other than WP.
At the moment my only problem with WP is that they keep changing the control interface so when I want to make a change, I have to hunt for awhile to find the control I’m looking for. That and the theme I am currently using is no longer supported and features die off from time to time.
What I have noticed lately about my blog and other blogs I follow is the general trend of few posts and less traffic per post. Not that I get more than a handful of views and comments for a post, but I have noticed a general slowing down. That’s likely just the natural evolution of the blogosphere and nothing sinister. It’s also likely due to the lifecycle of a individual blog – bloggers often post a lot and then stop. I’ve been blogging for about 12 years and my drive to write for the blog is waning a bit.
On the other side is WP’s parent company Automattic and their need to drive sales, revenue and profit. That’s why they make changes to WP that upset the users. When I started out, WP.com had mostly free themes you could use for your site and a few paid “Premium Themes.” Now, it’s different and the themes you’d really like to use are for sale and the free ones are junkie. Why, money – they want your money in their pocket.
Part of that is corporate greed, but another part is that running a computer company is expensive. The average software engineer earns $145,000 per year cash (add benefits, taxes, and other overhead and the true price is closer to $290,000) and Automattic has around 2,000 employees – a lot of those software engineers. Add to that the cost of running data centers or buying cloud services from Amazon, Google or MicroSoft to power the product and costs add up quickly (we’re talking millions of dollars a month).
The real problem is that most social media companies start out with the mindset that they need to build the user base as large and as quickly as possible so at the start they offer lots of free stuff to just get you hooked into their platform. Normally this is funded by first getting venture capital and then going public and selling stock. Selling stock pays back the venture capitalists, but soon the investors who bought stock want to get their share of the profits only to discover that most of the services are being given away and actually income is far less than expenses. That’s when the push to sell stuff really gets going and we users start losing the free stuff we got when the deal started.
Companies like Facebook, take years to make enough revenue to just cover basic expenses and if you’re going to sell stock to Wall Street, you better be profitable. Most social media companies make their money selling advertising and while that’s a large market, it is limited and each year brings a new competitor to the table reducing the slice each company gets. This limited money supply drives companies to look for other revenue sources, like charging for themes.
This and other money making schemes by the high tech folks often put the users of a platform in opposition to the company and if the company does something particularly irksome to the user base (rule change, restriction, etc), it can find itself without users and go out of business. It’s a fine line to walk, you need a lot of users to sell more advertising, and the best way to get users is to offer services for free but then at some point you need to earn enough money to pay the bills and pay back your investors.
The fastest way to piss off your user base is to take away the free stuff. There are also technology shifts that can kill things too. Ever hear of Myspace or AOL? Technology shifts killed both of these because they failed to invest in new technology. Today we’re seeing a shift in a number of social media companies that look like they may kill their platform altogether.
Three come to mind, Twitch, Twitter and Reddit. All three are suffering money problems and all three made changes to improve the bottom line. Twitch, owned by Amazon, quickly reversed its recent police designed to stop users from selling advertising in their videos, but likely the damage is done. By the way, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of Twitch. It was suppose to compete with YouTube, but ended up being a gathering spot for video gamers to stream their games. It’s likely that it would never amount to much but a niche market, but now it’s likely to die out.
Twitter is one that you could write about for years. Much has been said about the sale of the company and most of it wrong. Twitter was in financial and other trouble long before the car guy came by to restore freedom of speech. All the company actions taken since the sale have been about money – reducing the amount spent and increasing the revenue. Fire a thousand engineers and you’ve saved the company hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The other big thing they’ve done is to start charging for access to its API (application program interface) or the way big data users access the platform. If you used to have WP post your blog post to Twitter, WP uses the API to do it. As of May, WP announced that Twitter wanted too much money for access and removed the connector. WP could have passed that cost onto its user base, but I doubt you would have liked that monthly bill on your credit card. Twitter is likely to lose a lot of users, but it’s also going to reduce costs so it just might find a balancing point where it can survive. Not everyone will be happy about that.
Reddit has been an interesting case to watch and just the latest social media company to face possible extinction. The company faces the basic money problem – too many users driving up expenses and not enough income to allow it to go public. Its CEO, Steve Hoffman, seems to be willing to upset his users to get more money. At the limits of advertising income, his team has decided to charge for access to its API which until now has been free.
From a technology standpoint this makes sense. One of the largest infrastructure costs to a company like Reddit is data transfer through the API, terabytes of data can flow through this pipe every hour and that costs money for the servers, databases, internet connections, IT staff, etc. Little of this data transfer benefits Reddit. We’re finding out that companies like Google, are actually pointing AI at Reddit to train things like chatbots to write posts. Reddit basically is saying, “you want our data, you pay for it.” Sadly, the way they are implementing the paid API access locks out everyone who doesn’t pay – including loyal users who have built useful tools on their own time and expense that actually helped build up the Reddit user base to what it is today. Those tools aren’t getting a free pass to the API.
Now you have a situation where many users are offended that their loyalty to the brand isn’t being honored while the company is desperate for cash. The result is a stand off that no one can win without a lot of damage being done to the brand. Reddit is now on a collision course with irrelevance.
I’m not tying to be cynical here, it’s just life in high tech. I can tell you stories of hundreds of other companies who’ve gone under for basically these issues. The sad part is that even with a history in the business, CEOs and boards of directors continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. We users should also accept our small part in the problem. We like free stuff, but when the free stuff stops, we need to understand that it was never free and that the company will always rewrite the rules to benefit them.
And yes, I now have a pizza in the oven – pepperoni, spinach and olive. yum.
Andrew's View of the Week 
Fascinating stuff… I have been very bad about blogging, but when do get on WP (like today!), I notice that views on other bloggers sites that used to get in the hundreds are now a handful. I love free stuff, but you’re right, TNSTAAFL! And I LOVE Reddit – I hope it survives!
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Sadly there isn’t. I suspect Reddit will survive, but it will be greatly changed.
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Pizza sounds good right about now. Technology has gone far. I was blogging for more than a decade but my relationship with social media is still touch and go.
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It’s gone a long way. Blogging is about the only social media I use.
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The pizza sounds yummy. The info here is great. I’ve been blogging on WP since 2010 and the changes drive me nuts. I get why they do it, but I don’t like it. I’ve also noticed way less traffic on my blog in the last couple years. Maybe people just don’t read blogs as much any more? I don’t know. I don’t use any social media other than FB, which I only keep to stay in contact with friends who live far away. Actually, I can’t stand being on FB because of all the ads and other crap.
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Ads on all the platforms is getting worse and even on FB I’ve noticed people not posting as much as they used to. I think it’s a general trend everywhere.
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You and I have been around here for the same time, Andrew. I’m surprised I’ve lasted this long, but I take a lot of breaks along the way. Then I feel energized to begin again. I have FB and Instagram, but I usually just use those for my writing, only occasionally, for personal fun posts. My blog is my main social media platform. I wouldn’t have the time for another platform. Thanks for the info. 🙂
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Early on, I tried having multiple social media outlets. The WP blog was going to be the hub and I’d reflect content to the other platforms. Over time I realized that each platform needs a lot of work and different kinds of content so these days I’m just here on WP.
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Your pizza sounds delicious! It’s pizza night tonight at our place. 🙂
I don’t use much social media, either. I use WordPress.com for my blog and website, but ever since WP forced me to use the Block Editor, I’ve been considering switching to a self-hosted WordPress.org site. That Block Editor is a deal-breaker for me — it’s so agonizingly slow and clunky. Where before I used to be able to type HTML inline for special symbols, now I have to go through a multi-click process; and wait and wait and… wait for it to refresh. For an inveterate keyboarder and HTML writer, that’s just torture!
Ah, such is ‘progress’… or maybe I’m just a grumpy old dinosaur. (Or maybe that’s not an ‘or’.) 😉
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I have to say that when the Block Editor was forced on us, I almost went to a self-hosted WP, but at the time I was working full time and just didn’t want to mess with it. These days I write my posts in other tools and just cut and paste them into the block editor. Clunky, but I don’t do fancy HTML stuff.
But if WP does any more “Improvements” I might make a move.
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Thanks for your interesting post.
I watch Morning Joe on my DVR when I get up. Joe Scarborough was bemoaning “what happened to Twitter? I used to flip through my favorite Twitter feeds and could catch up on everything that’s happening”.
I think you’re right, we seem to be on the cusp of transitioning from free content to ad-supported and paid content. … and users feel ripped off because they were used to “free”.
Thanks for making me think … for a bit anyway 😀
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Nothing’s forever and lately it just feels like a big change is building.
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That’s really interesting information.
I’m impressed you’ve blogged for so long. I shut down my first site, and then took a six year break, before starting up with a new moniker.
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I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done so far. and I’m amazed that I’ve been here for so long.
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I’ve been blogging on WP since early 2010 and there are many observations I want to make, but don’t have the time right now. I hope to respond in detail later this evening. Hold me to it, Andrew.
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I will hold you to that!
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My WP blogs are pretty static, sadly, but I don’t have any better success with other SM. I’ll probably keep going with blogs until I quit writing.
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That’s where I am. I don’t get the traffic I’d like on WP, but the others didn’t do any better. For now this is enough for me.
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Your choice of pizza is much more appealing than the inevitable for-profit maneuvers we face with these companies. Pawns in the game. At some point you and I will decide it’s just not worth our time and money to keep up with the new and different being forced on us. Then we simply find another, more appealing outlet for our writing.
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I keep wondering when this blogging platform stops being my choice for writing. Someday that will happen, but I doubt my taste in pizza will change. 😉
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Interesting analysis. It’s true, often companies are making changes they say are “better” instead they are cumbersome and it the end, lets’ face it, companies do need to “make a profit.” Things are changing as you mentioned with WP, Twitter, Facebook (rarely go on, but it’s ALL advertising now), that it will be interesting to see where people go to communicate with each other moving forward. We’re evolving…
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I suspect that we’re on the threshold of a big change in communication. FB isn’t being used by younger people, usage is shifting, people are tired of all the ads … I know our family is using more text messaging and sharing less on social media. I’m not sure where it’s going, but there’s a change about to happen.
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You are right, more texting. I think people are getting bored with the sharing, takes a lot of time. I gave up Facebook a few years ago, have not regretted it. My children late 20s, they don’t go on Facebook much anymore either, too busy.
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We have kids that sometimes post, but the grandkids in their 20s don’t even have FB accounts. I keep my FB account, but mostly to stay in contact with a few out of town friends.
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I am such a small and newer blogger and have such a tiny audience that it is hard for me to see and assess a difference. Like many creators, finding the right platform to get the word out on what we have to offer is a large part of the challenge of staying in business. It used to be that Facebook was a good source for what I am doing, but that has really changed over the past couple of years and I am realizing that it is not a platform that will sustain my business. There is much to learn regarding social media and the reach we get through using these platforms. As usual, it comes down to ‘hours in the day’ for me and having time to learn and research all of these aspects of the business. It certainly isn’t easy. I have great admiration for IT people like yourself and your knowledge. It is an ever-changing arena, isn’t it? Thanks for your insights.
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Running a business using social media is a challenge as things change so much and so fast. FB was good for business at one time, but not anymore. I don’t know how a small business owners keep up. Big business has staff to keep track.
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$290,000 a year for a softwear engineer! I was in the wrong business, teaching French and running the football team in my spare time.
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and that’s just the average. The amount of money the industry pumps out for engineering staff is insane.
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Well, this was eye-opening, Andrew. Nicely explained. And the pizza mention makes me hungry.
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I knew I had to bring in the pizza – after all that’s the most important thing. 😉
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My posts have dropped off because I finally cut the cord and have been doing battle with totally unfamiliar interfaces just to watch tv. And yes, I’m getting awfully tired of constantly struggling to understand yet another WordPress “improvement.” It gets harder and harder as I get older and older. Funny how that works.
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Cutting the cord can take awhile to get used to. I find that over time I use less of the WP special features and just focus on writing a few words now and then. Sometimes companies lose sight of what their users find important.
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