SMH at dead Brunei blogs and blogging communities. Rant incoming.
It’s not that social media is bad - and duh, stupid simplistic argument to make - but it’s the ways they are structured.
Instagram: As a friend (Nazmi) pointed out recently, it’s really hard to find anything on Instagram. To expand this:
IG/bruwomendo or IG/humansofnbd - Looking for a write-up or interview with someone specific? Good luck!
Looking for a specific comic by a local comic artist? Looking for a specific product from a local business? Or even a post by that local influencer/ celeb/ orang pemes? Was it posted 6 months ago? You’re probably not going to find it!
Facebook: Searching by text is possible, and sometimes (but sometimes not) you can navigate the timeline by month and year. Facebook can change these features at any time. And permalinks are pointless if you’re not logged into Facebook.
Twitter: Threads took years to evolve to their current, more easily traversable state, and arguably still could be better.
There’s a wealth of experiences and content on social networks, which supposedly replaced blogs as a container, but structurally are damn frustrating as archives. There are fuck-all ways to organise them for other people to find and read. It’s great when you use the native apps and you’re logged in (and thus you’re locked in), but it shuts out people who don’t have ‘em, or who don’t know how to use the exact search techniques for each platform.
This is one of the reasons I believe it is still much better to have your own website or online space away from social platforms. You can use your social media accounts to complement your website rather than to replace it. A website could still be hosted on a third-party platform - Tumblr, Wordpress, even website builders like Wix - but takes you out of that more restrictive structure of the Facebook-Instagram-Twitter combo.
Think of website visitors as your potential clients/ collaborators/ contributors/ visitors, who might not be able to find what they want, when scrolling through your social media feeds. Think of those from another country, who are less locally networked, and can’t rely on word of mouth, or even have any idea of your name, and therefore can’t plonk it into the Instagram/Facebook search box.
If you make content or run a business, and are interested in web presence over the longer term, consider having a website. So that I can find your shit. That’s really all I want.
(I concede that it’s more important for certain types of content to have a website. If you’re talking businesses, there are those that will survive just fine without ever needing their own website.)
(Hmm I wonder if this would be more useful if written as a list.)