Disruptive Conversations

A tip for all the newcomers to Mastodon - if you are seeing a lot of posts in your timelines in languages that you don’t know, there is a very simple way you can filter those posts out. You just:

• In the web client, click on the gear icon to go into Preferences
• Select the “Other” panel under Preferences (see screenshot above)
• Scroll down to “Filter languages"
• Check the boxes next to the languages that you want to see
• Scroll up to the top and press the “Save changes” button

Now your Mastodon timelines will only show you posts that indicate they are in the languages you have specified.

I made this change a few years back because I’m on a larger instance, and on the rare occasions when I actually looked at the Local timeline, it was full of posts in so many wonderful languages… but only a few of them I could actually understand. So I went into these preferences and changed it so that I only see posts in the three languages I know (at least somewhat): English, German, and French.

One important caveat - these filters are based on *the language the post indicates it is written in*. If you look at the screenshot above, in the middle right side you see a “Posting language” that is set as “Same as interface language”. And back on the main Preferences screen I have set my “Interface language” to English.

So all my posts are set by default to be in English. However, if I decide to go in and write a post in German or French, by default it will go out to everyone on Mastodon as “English”.

And so even with the filters on, you might still see posts in other languages if the author has their Mastodon client set to default to one of the languages you want to see. But setting these language filters should remove many of the posts in languages you don’t understand.

Setting a Post’s Language

BUT… what if you are a multilingual person and you want to post in multiple languages and allow people to filter based on languages?

In the web view of Mastodon, it’s very simple. When you are writing a post, you simply go to the bottom of the compose window where you will see the two letter abbreviation for whatever your default language is. Mine shows “EN” as English is my default.

When you press that language, you get a popup menu where you can change it to whatever language you are writing in. 

This changes the language setting ONLY for the post you are writing.

As soon as you hit “Publish!” and the compose window returns to being blank, the language will be reset back to your default language.

So if I wanted to send out a series of German posts or replies, I would have to REMEMBER TO CHANGE THE LANGUAGE SETTING for every single post. Which, to be honest, I will probably forget to do.

Additionally, I cannot find a way to change the language setting for a post in the Mastodon mobile app. When I go into the compose window, I see many options, but not to set the language. Some of the many other mobile apps may have this language support, but the one maintained by the Mastodon development team does not.

For both those reasons - people having to remember, and support on mobile clients - people writing in different languages may have the posts going out as whatever their default language is.

The point being that the language filters are great to have and can help adjust your timelines so that you are seeing content in only languages that you understand - you just need to know that they are not 100% perfect. 

Regardless, I’m very glad that they are there!

In a sign of the growth of Mastodon in the midst of the continuing drama at Twitter, Techmeme, the news site I use the most to keep up on tech news, has started to highlight Mastodon posts in addition to the way the site highlights tweets. In fact, in an interesting bit of prioritization, the site puts Mastodon posts first before tweets.

If you go to Techmeme.com now, you can see the Mastodon sections for some articles that are discussed on Mastodon. It’s actually an interesting view into what groups of people have moved from Twitter to Mastodon.

For example, at the moment when I am writing this article, the top of Techmeme has 9+ stories all around cryptocurrencies, the FTX debacle, and the latest news of more bankruptcies and other issues. There are no Mastodon sections but this makes sense as most of “crypto twitter” seems to be sticking with Twitter right now… or trying to look at other “web3” social media.

However, when you get past all the cryptocurrency stuff, the next current article is about LastPass and has a large Mastodon section… because a substantial amount of the Twitter “infosec” / security community has moved to Mastodon.

Other articles such as the one I show in the image above have a more balanced mixture of Mastodon posts and tweets. (Although seeing the prevalence of “@geoffreyfowler”, I’m guessing he is cross posting between Mastodon and Twitter and Techmeme’s algorithm has picked up both.) Another example shows the Mastodon posts and tweets combined in a single block (at the time I’m writing this).

It’s great to see this recognition of the growth of Mastodon’s usage. It’s also great because it shows to all the readers of Techmeme who are NOT yet on Mastodon that there *are* conversations happening on Mastodon. Perhaps this may cause some others to try it out!

Techmeme is, of course, on Mastodon themselves. You can follow them at https://techhub.social/@Techmeme (or search for "@[email protected]” in your Mastodon account).

P.S. As a daily reader of Techmeme, I noticed this change when it was happening, but I must give a tip of the hat to Will Oremus who was the first I saw posting about this change on Mastodon. 

It’s great to see nonprofit organizations getting into the business of operating public Mastodon / Fediverse instances. Two announcements recently caught my attention.

First, Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, announced that they would launch a public server (“instance”) in early 2023:

In early 2023, Mozilla will stand up and test a publicly accessible instance in the Fediverse at Mozilla.Social. We’re eager to join the community in growing, experimenting, and learning how we can together solve the technical, experience, and trustworthiness challenges inherent in hyper-scale social systems. Our intention is to contribute to the healthy and sustainable growth of a federated social space that doesn’t just operate but thrives on its own terms, independent of profit- and control-motivated tech firms. An open, decentralized, and global social service that puts the needs of people first is not only possible, but it’s absolutely necessary.

Now, they did not specifically say it would be a *mastodon* instance, although I’ve seen many people assume it will be. But if they use some other Fediverse / ActivityPub software, that’s perfectly fine! It will just be great having Mozilla in the Fediverse with their lengthy experience in operating Internet systems at scale.

Second, the 75-year-old Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), has already launched their own publicly available instance at mastodon.acm.org. From their intro message, that includes the link to join:

Hi there! This is ACM, the world's largest computing society. As you might have noticed, we have opened not only our official #Mastodon account but also our own #instance! 

Please consider joining @mastodon.acm.org, a community for #computing researchers & practitioners to connect & exchange ideas with each other, whether you are an ACM member or not. 

They’ve also tweeted about it and from the server stats it seems 548 people have so far joined.

Addressing The Two Major Challenges

The importance of these entities relates to what I described as two major challenges for operating Mastodon servers: scaling and content moderation.

If we are to bring millions of more people (or even 10s or 100s or millions) into the Fediverse, we will need many more servers. It will be helpful if we have some servers operated by companies or organizations that know how to operate Internet infrastructure at scale. This is what excites me most about Mozilla. With their operation of the Firefox browser, plus services like Pocket and their VPN product, they understand how to do this. They can potentially help provide an example for others.

I don’t know much about whether the ACM can also address the scaling (I’m not a member), but it’s good to see organizations like this getting into the space. The ACM’s announcement, though, does highlight the challenge around content moderation. Already, a couple of people are asking for specifics around content moderation:

And another apparent member was questioning the ACM’s ability to manage a server.

These are questions that organization will have to be ready to handle.

As Mozilla gets ready to launch their server, they can expect to be similarly grilled about what level of moderation they will or will not do.

It’s tough to find the right balance - which is why I think organizations have to be sure they are ready to commit the necessary staff time, energy, and finances before they plunge into it.

Regardless, I think it is great for both Mozilla and ACM to be entering the Fediverse with their own servers. I wish them all the best!

As more people embrace the decentralized world of the Fediverse - and as we WANT more people to migrate to the Fediverse - we are seeing an explosion of new Mastodon servers/instances set up by all sorts of people and groups. Friends of mine have launched their own just running in simple virtual machines. There are now “Mastodon hosting” springing up - ex. masto.host, although the person running it has paused new customers due to the high demand.

But there are two major challenges for people or organizations getting into the space:

1 - SCALING - If you just run a small server for yourself and maybe a few friends, you can limit the system administration workload. But if you launch a public server… you have to be able to handle the influx of new accounts, particularly during the current Twitter migration/exodus. This might be very cool initially, but at some point it starts to become a serious amount of work. You have the technical challenges of scaling to support more users - and you also have to meet the expectations of members in terms of availability, reliability, etc. You have to answer their questions, feature requests, etc.

Running a Mastodon server at scale (or really any kind of public server with user accounts) takes a considerable investment of time, energy, and money. You need to think about how you involve multiple people, how you will support all your users, and how you financially support it all.

[UPDATE - It was noted to me that there can be very real technical and cost requirements with growing a server in particular with storing media. Whenever someone uploads an image or video to the server, it must be stored on that server. Additionally, your server will host media coming from other servers with which you are federated. So as your server gains more users, who follow more people on other servers, there is more and more demand for file storage on your server.]

2 - CONTENT MODERATION - This is perhaps the BIGGEST challenge for hosting a public server. If you again run a small server for yourself and people you trust, then this may all be fine. You set clear expectations with your friends or people you think you can trust, and that may be all you need to do.

But the minute you start letting the broader public into your server, you run into all sorts of legal compliance issues you have to be aware of. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently wrote, there are a range of legal concerns in the USA for operators of any service that hosts “user-generated content”. One big issue is copyright law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). EFF also mentions FOSTA/SESTA, law enforcement requests for identity information, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

And this is just for the USA. Add in the need to potentially comply with European Union (EU) legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the recently passed Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA). And… the legislation popping up in many other parts of the world. And, of course, your content moderation abilities needs to be able to grow as you scale to support more users.

[UPDATE - Aswath Rao pointed out in a comment on Mastodon that as a server operator its not enough that you trust the people who have accounts on your server. For every person your users follow on other servers, that person’s content and media are also copied onto your server. So you wind up hosting content on your server from all of those other external users, too. ]

These are also just the legal compliance issues around content moderation. You also have to think about what kind of community you want to foster on your server. Will you have additional moderation policies to create the kind of community you want? (For example, specifically not allowing “hate speech”.) If so, how will you then enforce those policies?

You need to again have the time, energy, and financial resources to be able to comply with the legal requirements, which may end up involving some level of monitoring / enforcement.

For both of those reasons, it will be interesting to see where the Fediverse goes - and in particular where Mastodon goes - in the time ahead. Will we continue to have the wide range of public servers as we do right now? Or over time will we see larger ones emerge that have the time, energy, and financial resources to address these challenges?

Just as Twitter is killing off it’s Revue newsletter service, Automattic is promoting their hosted WordPress.com service for newsletters - and providing some new tools to make that easier. In their announcement blog post, they note that WordPress.com has already had the features to email posts out automatically. This “newsletter” functionality has been there for quite some time. What they’ve done now, though, is to bring those newsletter features together in a new theme - and they’ve also simplified the process of setting up a newsletter site.

[NOTE - this feature is part of the WordPress.*COM* hosted service, not part of the WordPress software (sometimes referred to as "WordPress.ORG”) that you can install on your own servers. However, they indicate that the theme used for this newsletter feature will be made more widely available in the future.]

In the announcement, they mention these features:

•     Add unlimited email subscribers
•     Import subscribers from other platforms
•     Launch with a beautiful, ready-made theme or customize every detail with a myriad of Block Patterns 
•     Stylize your newsletter with a background image, site icon, and accent color 
•     Schedule email publishing
•     Monetize your site (stay tuned for more paid subscription features)
•     Use a free .blog subdomain or connect a custom domain with one of our paid plans
•     Publish on the go with Post by Email – making writing a newsletter as simple as sending an email

They also mention that you can start up a new newsletter or add the features to an existing hosted blog.

Giving It A Try

Naturally, I had to try it out. 😀 I started by going to the newsletter page and simply choosing the link “Start building your newsletter”. I logged in with my existing WordPress.com account and was brought to a page to set up my newsletter:

This was simple and easy. After I took the screenshot I added a logo, which needed to be circular. 

Here is one place Automattic will monetize - the “Favorite color” allowed me to use blue for free. Several other colors are available as part of a premium upgrade.

Next they prompt you to set up a custom domain, and offer you some options while allowing for more. You can, of course, skip this (I did in my test) and just use the free default domain they give you.

As I noted, I skipped this part and just moved on to the new screen where I was asked to choose a plan - or start with a free plan.

I chose for the moment to stick with the free plan for this test. After clicking that link, I had one more screen where I could add some initial email addresses and then… ta da… I was at a screen to start publishing

What Do I Think?

First, to be clear, there is not really any dramatically new functionality here. This is how WordPress has worked for quite some time. Even the field for someone to subscribe has been there as part of the “Subscribe Block”.

All that’s really new is this “Newsletter” theme and some of the onboarding screens.

Having said that… I think it can be a great way to get started with a newsletter!

You have all the power of WordPress editing. You can run it on your own domain. You can use it on your laptop or mobile device.

It’s WordPress!

Now, it’s not clear to me that you will get the kind of statistics that you will get from a Substack, Revue or other newsletter platform. I couldn’t see any way to find, for instance, the open rate, or to know how many people clicked which links. Maybe it’s there and I’ve just missed it. Or maybe there is the expectation that you might use Google Analytics for that as part of a paid plan.

I don’t know… and it doesn’t really matter for me, personally. But I could see people who want to use this as a newsletter platform wanting that kind of information.

My one criticism was with the information about the plans. I couldn’t find any easy matrix showing what I get on the free plan versus the paid plans. I could see the features across all the paid plans… but not how that compared to the free plan. It would be helpful to understand as it might cause me to jump into a paid plan.

All in all I think it is a very useful reminder that WordPress can support these kind of interactions over email.

I may consider moving an older newsletter over to this platform and trying it out in 2023.

What do you think about this news?

“How do I choose which Mastodon server to join? It’s SO CONFUSING! I just want to sign up to ‘Mastodon’!” 

This seems to be a common refrain from some people exploring Mastodon as part of the Twitter migration/exodus. 

The reality is that the Mastodon server you join is most important in the beginning when you are trying to discover new users. Over time, and as you follow more and more people, the server you are on becomes less important.

Let me explain...

I routinely point out to people asking these questions that it is a lot like choosing your email provider - do you use the email address your ISP gives you? Or Gmail? Hotmail? Yahoo mail? Protonmail? Or even run your own email server? 

No matter where you have an email address, you can send email to anyone else using email. Similarly, when you sign up on a Mastodon server (or “instance” to use the older term), you can view and interact with people on any other Mastodon server.

But that still doesn’t seem to register for some folks in an era when we are used to centralized, monolithic social platforms. You just join Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or… whatever service. Mastodon is different - you have to make a choice.

I’ve been using Mastodon since December 2016, and in my opinion, which server you are on really matters the most when you are first starting out and seeking to discover new users. Here’s why. In your Mastodon view on the web or in apps, there are three “timelines” (or “feeds”) that you can view:

• Home - all the posts (or “toots”) of people you follow
• Local - all the posts of people on your local server
• Federated - all the posts of people across the Fediverse who are followed by people on your local server[1]

When you are starting out, your home feed will likely be pretty empty, and so Mastodon will be a bit of a ghost town to you. What’s the point of going into it if you only see a couple of posts?

This is where the Local and Federated timelines are important. They help you discover new users to follow.

With the Local timeline, you get to see posts from all the people on your server. So if, for instance, you join techpolicy.social, you will discover posts and people to follow interested in technology policy. If you join mastodon.art, you will discover more people interested in art. If you join fosstodon.org, you’ll discover posts and people interested in free and open source software. If you join ipv6.social… you guessed it, you’ll discover people interested in IPv6. 😀

Beyond the Local timeline, the Federated timeline will help you discover all the Mastodon users on other servers that people on your server follow. So on techpolicy.social, odds are that you will discover other people interested in tech policy, as well as probably tech news sites, and all the other kinds of accounts people there follow. If your account is on mastodon.art, your Federated timeline will probably tend to have more artistic people mixed in. On fostodon.org, your Federated timeline will probably have more people using Linux, developers, and people advocating for free and open source software.

By viewing the Local and Federated timelines, you can find people to follow!

Each person you follow will then start to appear in your Home timeline.

At some point, you will follow enough people that your Home timeline is all you really need to pay attention to. There are sufficient people posting that you only really have the time to read your Home timeline.

The Local and Federated timelines aren’t as important any more. I mean… you still might dip into them from time to time to see if there are new people to discover, but you don’t really need to do so anymore.

This is the key point. The server you choose to join is most important in the beginning when you are trying to find people. But you don’t have to worry too much. Pick one you like and start there.

Over time, much like what email server you are on, it won’t matter quite as much.

-----

[1] Yes, it’s a little more complicated than that, but I’m simplifying for the purpose of this article.

By way of a Mastodon post this morning, I learned that the term “weblog” is 25 years old today! 

The Wikipedia article for “Blog” says that the term was coined by Jorn Barger on December 17, 1997. Reading the Wikipedia article about Jorn Barger, we learn:

On December 17, 1997, inspired by Dave Winer's Scripting News and running on Winer's Frontier publishing software, Barger began posting daily entries to his Robot Wisdom Weblog in the hope of finding "an audience who might see the connections between [his] many interests." These postings featured "a list of links each day shaped by his own interests in the arts and technology," thus offering a "day-to-day log of his reading and intellectual pursuits” and coining the term "weblog" as a novel form of web publishing.

At two syllables, “weblog” was of course ripe for shortening and so did evolve into “blog” just a couple of years later.

A “log of daily activities published on the web” became a “weblog” which then became a “blog”.

I started what we now call “blogging” back in 2000 on a site called Advogato that actually referred to your content as a “diary”. But I do remember well that other sites were hosting “weblogs” and “blogs”.

Pretty wild to think that was 25 years ago! Happy Birthday to “weblog”!

I was a little surprised to learn this morning that Twitter is shutting down its Revue newsletter service. Casey Newton first wrote about this back on November 3 in his Platformer newsletter, but subsequent articles after the massive layoffs confirmed that Revue is shutting down - and basically all the associated staff have been let go.

I had missed all those articles and just randomly saw a reference this morning when scanning social feeds.

It’s NOT actually surprising if you think about the fact that Elon Musk has to be laser-focused on revenue right now, particularly as his self-induced chaos is causing users and advertisers to leave Twitter. Revue was about long-form content published in email - and was not really a quick and easy way to increase advertising 

So as they note, it’s all going away:

• December 20, 2022 – Revue will set all outstanding paid subscriptions to cancel at the end of their billing cycle
• January 18, 2023 – Revue will shut down and all data will be deleted

It’s too bad as it was a nice platform… if you were a strong Twitter user.

It had the nice feature that it showed up right on your Twitter profile page, offering people the ability to easily subscribe:

On the back end, there were some simple tools to easily add tweets into your newsletter.

Also, unlike Substack, you could set up your Revue newsletter with a custom domain, such as I did with choices.danyork.com.

So What Will I Do Next?

As that image shows, I started a newsletter on Revue called “A Choice of Futures” back in October 2021 and published a whopping two issues! 🎉

I had great plans to do more, but ran into several challenges in timing and then got super busy with work and volunteer responsibilities in 2022.

But I was thinking about getting back to it in 2023.

So what now?

I could move that newsletter over to Substack, Medium, AWeber, or any of a zillion other places.

Or.. I can just shut down this particular newsletter. 

Realistically, that’s probably what I’ll do. Send one final issue as the period at the end of the sentence, and then be done.

You see… I actually already have a Substack newsletter at danyork.substack.com called “A View From The Crow’s Nest” where the intent is to write about new technology out on the horizon. It’s an even older newsletter that I used to run through an email service provider. I moved it to Substack back in March 2020 when Substack was getting a lot of attention. I wanted to learn about Substack and it was my intention to start doing more with it.

But then.. pandemic… and so much else of the craziness of COVID-19 and how our world was changing. I dropped that newsletter and so much else, just caught in the moment of trying to make it through each day.

By the time late 2021 came around and I was interested in a newsletter again, I had some concerns about the direction Substack was going… and so I thought I’d give Revue a try.

Ha!

Turns out the concerns would end up being with where Twitter and Revue were going instead!  (Although I do still have concerns about Substack!)

So that will be my personal plan. I’ve hit the button to export all my data from Revue, and I’ll invite folks there to join my other newsletter on Substack.

Any of you reading this are welcome to join too!

Today Twitter announced that starting on Monday, December 12, people can pay either $8 on Android or $11 on IOS to subscribe to “Twitter Blue” where they will get:

• the blue checkmark
• the ability to edit tweets
• prioritized appearance in replies, mentions, and search
• 50% fewer ads than non-verified people
• the ability to post longer, 1080p videos
• early access to other features

This is, of course, the re-launch of the re-launch of Twitter Blue after the disastrous recent attempt where people were quickly paying the $8 to set up all sorts of bogus and troll accounts.

Prioritization = Pay To Speak

The prioritization seems new to me. Was that in earlier versions of Twitter Blue? 

I find it fascinating that so much of the messaging about Twitter has been around “free speech” and leveling the playing field… but yet that messaging seems to run into the need to figure out how to get income. 

For many people in North America, Europe, or other more developed regions of the world, the $8 (or $11) per month might not be a big deal. But for people in MANY parts of the world, that may not be affordable. Will the rate be adjusted for countries where the income levels are substantially different?

How many voices will be diminished because they cannot afford this monthly subscription?

A Land of Many Checkmarks

What I found more interesting was a tweet in the thread:

The text reads:

we’ll begin replacing that “official” label with a gold checkmark for businesses, and later in the week a grey checkmark for government and multilateral accounts

And so Twitter will become a land of many checkmarks.

I don’t see anywhere info about HOW you will get those checkmarks. What is the process to get verified for those? Who will be eligible?

The Gamble Of Who Will Pay

The big question is of course - who will actually pay for this subscription? I see many Elon Musk supporters saying they will do so. But I’m not seeing many others talking about it. Particularly right now when the service seems to be in the midst of so much (mostly self-induced) chaos.

I’ve been on Twitter since 2006 and the service has been my “home” on social media. But right now, I don’t see myself paying for Twitter Blue amidst the chaos… and to be honest I don’t yet see the value in the subscription. (And also because I’m increasingly finding richer discussions over on Mastodon.)

Would you pay for Twitter Blue? 

I am a huge fan of TwitterSpaces! I enjoy hosting and participating in live audio TwitterSpaces. In fact, I’m hosting one later today!

It’s a great system and service to have live audio conversations. Easy for people to join and use. Easy to manage in terms of moderation. Easy to promote and publicize, particularly with the scheduling, and because you have your existing network of Twitter connections. The “live bar” in the mobile apps also helps people discover your Space, as does Twitter’s algorithm in promoting the Space to your followers and others. The user interface works for me, although I do wish web browser participants could participate versus just listen. Live transcription is great, as are the recordings.

All in all, I really like the service and want to continue doing TwitterSpaces.

BUT… with all the (mostly self-induced) chaos happening at Twitter right now, and the fact that a good number (most? all?) of the TwitterSpaces developers were let go in all the layoffs, I do wonder how much of a future there is. I’ll keep using it… but will the service stop working some day? Do TwitterSpaces fit into whatever grand plan there may or may not be?

So the question is…for those of us who want to engage in live “social audio"... what are the alternatives to TwitterSpaces?

Reddit Talk

I am most intrigued by Reddit Talk as the service provides most all of the features of TwitterSpaces, with the addition that web browser users can be full participants in the Talk (unlike Twitter).

The user interface is similar to TwitterSpaces, particularly in the mobile apps. Raising hands and moderating users is a similar experience. As a moderator you can check out the potential speakers by looking at their Reddit profiles and their “karma” points (a measure of engagement on Reddit). You can easily bring people on stage - and just as easily remove them.

Reddit added a “sound board” before Twitter did, and it has some nice jazzy music you can play while waiting for a talk to start. Talks can be recorded and stay around indefinitely (versus 30 days on Twitter). You can schedule them in advance and easily promote their URL. Comments are integrated into the “post” for the talk.

There are three things I miss from TwitterSpaces. First is the lack of an ability to spotlight content during a Talk, as you can share tweets into a Space and thus focus attention on the tweet in the conversation. You can of course post this as a comment in the Reddit post and direct people there, which is almost better because it is easily accessible after the Talk is over. But it doesn’t have the same effect as sharing into a Space in terms of helping guide the conversation.

Second, there is no live transcription as there is in a TwitterSpace. From an accessibility point of view, I think the transcription is great.

Third, there is no easy way to get any kind of analytics about how many people listened to your Talk or participated. I mean, TwitterSpaces don’t have much either, but they at least tell you: 1) how many people have listened to your talk in total; and 2) how many people listened live. That’s at least something that can help you understand how much engagement you have.

Overall, though, I like the Reddit Talk experience a lot!

A challenge for some people will be that Reddit Talks can only be done with a “subreddit” (a community), and only initiated by a moderator of the subreddit unless the “mods” have authorized you as a user to create Talks. If you are already a Redditor, and have a subreddit with a following, this may not be an issue. And the good news is that anyone can create a brand new subreddit where they are the moderator. But if you are doing that, you are essentially starting over in creating a new social graph.

And some people may have a challenge because it’s… well… Reddit... and the site’s reputation for trolls and bad behavior affects many people’s views of the site. I’ve been a long-time Redditor and would argue that there are many strong, positive, and non-troll-infested communities… but I grant that it can be an issue.

LinkedIn Audio Events

Wait… LinkedIn has social audio? Yes, indeed, you can now host LinkedIn Audio Events (see also this PDF that walks through the service).  I hosted an Audio Event the other day and it does provide a very basic audio experience. You set it up within LinkedIn as an event. You must schedule the audio event - you can’t just “go live” right at that moment, but you can schedule it for 5 or 10 minutes from the time you are creating the event… so that’s close enough. When you create the event, you can:

• Add a cover image related to your event
• Add a description with information about what you will be discussing
• List any speakers who will be participating from your LinkedIn connections. Apparently after they confirm they will appear in the event information. (I did not test this.)

Once you publish the event it goes out in your activity feed where your connections may see it.

The one struggle I had was that after I hit the publish button… I could not find the event! 🤦‍♂️

I was just back on my LinkedIn home page.. and couldn’t see my new event anywhere. I had to go into my profile and into my Activity Feed to find it again and join the event. Hopefully I just missed something in the user interface, but I found this confusing.

The event itself went fine. Two people I know saw the announcement in their LinkedIn feeds and joined in, so I was able to test a bit.

On the plus side, the audio sounded good, and the real-time transcription was pretty amazing. LinkedIn being the kind of site it is, it was also very easy to see the other people in the chat and whether you are connected or not - and then make those connections.

Being just another form of a LinkedIn “Event”, there are also analytics about how many people attended the event live, and also how many have viewed it over time. If you have more than 10 attendees, it seems you will get demographic info about the jobs, industries, locations, etc., which makes sense given that LinkedIn has all of that.

One negative for me was that it seems you can only be in the Audio Event once as yourself. I started out in the web interface and then thought I’d join on the LinkedIn mobile app. Doing so kicked me out of the web interface.

While this may sound strange to want to do, and was probably NOT on the LinkedIn developer’s requirement lists, it’s actually been enormously helpful for both TwitterSpaces and Reddit Talks to be able to have yourself in the session on two different devices. Yes, you need to adjust volume and muting so you don’t create feedback loops, but it can be helpful operationally.

Anyway, this is just something to know if you try LinkedIn Audio Events.

Other differences are that, as LinkedIn notes on a help page:

At the moment, Audio Events cannot be recorded or replayed after the event has ended. Audio Events have no video, screen sharing or text chat.

Now, while you don’t have a live text chat, you can leave comments on the event page in LinkedIn, in a similar fashion to a Reddit Talk or replying to the Space on Twitter, so there is a way 

The other services all do offer recordings, and perhaps this is something LinkedIn will develop over time.

Another note - Audio Events are only available right now for individuals on LinkedIn, not for pages that organizations and companies have.

Otherwise, it has many of the same features as the others, as described in the “Host an Audio Event” section of a help page. There’s a maximum of 17 speakers (which is plenty, to me) and basic controls to bring someone on stage and off.

One would think that, with LinkedIn being all about establishing and maintaining your professional reputation, there would be fewer moderation issues with regard to trolls and people seeking to disrupt a session (versus Twitter Spaces or Reddit Talk).

Without the recording feature, I’m not personally interested in doing as much with LinkedIn Audio Events… but they could be an option.

Spotify Live

Once upon a time (well, in 2020), an app launched called “Locker Room” to host live conversations about… sports! It was then acquired by Spotify who renamed it first to “Greenroom” and then to “Spotify Live”. (Read the history.) I used it a number of times while it was Greenroom and it was a decent service, although only accessible through the mobile app.

It’s not clear to me whether this remains a viable option. Back in April 2022 when Spotify renamed it to Spotify Live, they also announced live sessions would be merged into the main Spotify app. The theory was that the hundreds of millions of Spotify users could find and listen to live sessions. People would still need to use the separate app to participate in the live sessions, but discovery would be easier. They still mention his on their “live on Spotify” web page. Spotify also said it would be streaming its original live events through the main app.

Eight months later, I’m not sure how this is working. When I go into the main app on my iPhone, I can’t find any way to see the “Live on Spotify” items. And when I go into the Spotify Live app, it’s a dead zone. There were only four live “rooms” and they only had one or two people in them… and in the time I was in them, I didn’t hear any audio! Now, I was doing this early in the morning US Eastern, but I would have expected some European activity. There are some rooms scheduled over the weekend, and perhaps they’ll have audiences.

But right now, I’m not getting the vibe that it’s a strong option.

Clubhouse

I could, of course, return to Clubhouse, where the whole "social audio" thing emerged in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic.

I could, but part of the reason I left Clubhouse was because it was completely rebuilding a social network, and I have already spent the time doing that in other services. What I like about TwitterSpaces is it leverages my existing social graph on Twitter. Similarly, Reddit Talk leverages the membership of a given subreddit, and LinkedIn leverages your existing connections.

Plus, as has been outlined in many posts, Clubhouse has had a range of mis-steps and issues. When I go into the app it has a ghost town feel to me. They did finally add web listening, but like TwitterSpaces on the web, you can’t really engage.

I just don’t see Clubhouse as a really viable option for me. Maybe it will work for some of you.

So.. what is Plan B?

I don’t know. Of the options I outlined above, I’m going to continue experimenting with Reddit Talk, and I’ll be curious to see if LinkedIn adds recording capability.

Overall, though, I hope that TwitterSpaces can continue. I’ve noticed that Elon Musk seems to enjoy participating in Spaces. He had one last Saturday with over one million listeners! So perhaps he’ll work to ensure that there are appropriate developers and engineers to keep it all working.

We’ll see! In the meantime, I’ll keep my ears open...

What do you think could be a good alternative?