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Threads Social Media Platform…What another one?

There were so many things I wanted to do this week, but I just couldn’t find the time.  The reason?  I was too busy posting about my life on my social media channels.

For someone like me in the entertainment world the whole concept of posting is a bit like that philosophical question

‘If a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?’

Basically, in the world of social media, if you don’t post it on twitter did it really happen?

My problems have grown exponentially over the years.  It started off with Myspace. Myspace was one of the first social media ‘platforms’ where musicians and artists could post their work and reach the whole world.  It made some people famous over night as they went viral. 

Social media video, less than a minute and 1090x 1080

I think I still have a Myspace site somewhere out there in the cloud but when it got taken over by some big multinational media company it all seemed to change. You couldn’t see the people or music you were interested in because of all of the adverts.

Then there was ‘Friends Reunited’ where 30 years after leaving school you could finally talk to that girl from your biology class that you never quite had the courage to talk to when you were a spotty teenager.  I’m sure some romances were rekindled but quite often people were shocked to see quite how old their class mates had become in the intervening years.

My Facebook Page

I remember my daughter coming back from University in the early 2000’s and trying to explain to me the concept behind a new platform called Facebook.  It seemed to me like a complete waste of time, but she said it was a great way to keep in touch with her college friends during the holidays as they all went home to the 4 corners of the world.

 

Rugby Legend Grain Jenkins spoke at the concert in Newport.

Of course, I soon joined.  Having dumped Myspace I needed somewhere else to post my music and share all of my ‘terribly’ exciting news with the whole world.  Facebook was the perfect place. As the years passed and I gathered more and more ‘friends’. I suddenly realised… Facebook was a business.  If you mentioned you were in concert at a particular theatre people started to buy tickets.  

When I got to 5000 ‘friends’ I had to make a decision,  if I wanted more ‘friends’ I had to become a Page not a Person.  Before long I was more than one Page.  I had different Pages for my music or various musicals and even the odd film and podcast. 

My supper before the gig provided by Ebenezer Abertillery.

The thing is the ‘Platform’ makes you feel guilty if you don’t post regularly.  You get messages like ‘Maldwyn, you haven’t posted in a week, interactions are down 15%.  Not only do you need to post to your friends, you need to do things to post about.  You feel under pressure to do exciting things to share.  There are only so many photos of your lunch or Swansea Bay you can post.

Then along came twitter.  140 characters to tell the world how you are feeling and what you’re doing.  It’s the same process as Facebook but a different collection of 7000 or so friends.  Right Facebook, twitter…then someone said to me, ‘I don’t see you on Instagram’ What!!!

Advertising a series of concerts with a picture of Grammy nominated Zeke Listenbee.

Instagram is all about the pictures.  So now not only do I need to be during really exciting things everyday I also need to be able to take a photograph that encapsulates my ‘wonderful’ life.  But I thought that was for my Pinterest account. Well at least if I take one lovely photo I can now use that for twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

What about YouTube?  YouTube is pretty amazing as it allows you to post videos of songs, or podcasts, even full length musicals.  It’s also a great place to save your home videos. The videos can be virtually any length, in fact they encourage you to make them longer rather than shorter.

YouTube prefers 1920 x 108- shape videos

But now you can also post your videos on your Facebook page. 

Right lets recap, make a video for YouTube but also post to Facebook.  Take the audio off separately and post that to your podcast page.  Choose a nice still and post that to Instagram and twitter…except they now let you post videos to Instagram and twitter, but your Instagram videos can only be one minute and your twitter videos 2 mins. I do hope you are keeping up.

@mal.pope

A terrific night in Newport @EECNewport with Garin Jenkins @rhysstenner and @zekelistenbee . Tomorrow Cwmaman

♬ original sound - Mal Pope

Tiktok videos work the other way around 1080 x 1920

Then came TikTok.  TikTok means you need to take videos of yourself doing wonderful extraordinary things in ‘portrait’ mode as its aimed at your phone.  What another video shape and size?

But it can change your life your publicist says.  Look at Bronwen Lewis, she is selling out theatres and presenting TV and Radio Shows after going viral on TikTok. 

So I joined TikTok only to find there was already someone called Mal Pope on the platform with my picture and he already had a couple of hundred followers.  I’ve been on TikTok for almost a year now and I still don’t have as many as ‘fake’ Mal Pope.

Linkedin impressions down 45.7% last week.  I must post more and better!

Then there’s LinkedIn which is like Facebook for business people.  I joined, I post, I get offers from head-hunters to do totally inappropriate jobs I’m really not qualified for.

This week I think I might have reached my limit.  If you hadn’t heard twitter was recently bought by Billionaire Elon Musk and everything seems to have changed.  These days I only seem to get posts on my timelines advertising bras and racists.  I do occasionally see posts from people I follow but often their ‘considered’ posts are filled with hate filled comments.

The answer…a new social media platform, Threads!

To be honest I only joined having learnt from my experience of being a late TikTok adopter.  I wanted to get in quick before ‘fake’ Mal Pope.  So I joined on Thursday and all through my Gospel concert in Sardis, Resolven that night my phone kept vibrating as more and more friends were added. 

A Picture from Resolven for the Americans following the tour.

I thought I had already my bit to feed the various social media beasts.  Arriving in Resolven I first posted a video from the previous nights’ concert in Abertillery.  I kept it at just under a minute which meant I could post the same video to twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.  I kept it at 1080 x 1080 resolution as that is the best compromise for Portrait and landscape platforms!!!

Then I saw a plaque commemorating Resolven’s mining history.  Knowing that the Church in Atlanta who were also performing in Resolven that night would be following us I posted that picture to give them a feeling of place.

Then I noticed that the foundation stone from 1904 was laid by a man named Richard Cory.   I remembered there was a Simon and Garfunkel song of the same name, so I took a picture, added the music and cryptic comment based on the song, tagged in Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel and posted that to all of the platforms including Threads.

The ladies from Sardis Baptist Church Resolven

Finally, I took a picture of the ladies of Sardis Baptist Church who had made us a lovely supper and posted that…well to be honest I can’t quiet remember where but I expect to all of them.

So as you follow my ‘wonderful’, ‘thrilled filled’, ‘exciting’ life on social media spare a thought for me trying to find enough time to live and to do things that I can then spend the rest of the day posting about online!

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