gbhnews
hey #fediverse
so I’ve been thinking about this for a long time
at some point yr humble fediverse servant is going to get called into a meeting to justify how I am spending my time over here
& I suspect saying “listen this is the most fun I’ve had on social media since early Tumblr” is not the move
This is all to say: if you want local #news here, follow us ?.
If we get this working I think other news orgs. will follow.
Dr. Matt Lee ?:verified:
@gbhnews hey at least some of the reason exists is because of work happening in Boston about 10 years ago…
Dr. Matt Lee ?:verified:
@gbhnews Mastodon is a continuation of GNU social, made in Boston (by myself and others), and uses the ActivityPub specification as recommended by the W3C in Cambridge.
gbhnews
@mattl Tell me more!
gbhnews
Here's what I gave to the reporters in my newsroom: https://lisawilliams.github.io/lisa/tech/2022/11/28/mastodon-101-for-journalists.html
It's a little tough to make the argument just on numbers, at least for now. Mastodon has about ~9M users; Twitter has ~240M, and FB and YT have billions.
Kent Borg
@gbhnews I particularly want individual reporters to quit donating content to Twitter and post over here.
KerryFitz
@gbhnews I will seriously hand write a letter and mail it to the station explaining how important it is for you to be here on Mastodon. I followed you on twitter but the algorithm over there never promoted it high enough in the feed which was wrong. When I came here I was so excited I wasn’t going to lose my local news when I quit twitter.
gbhnews
@FindingHobbes You're the best. ⭐️
And I do think engagement is deeper/more genuine here. For now, since Mastodon doesn't have the kind of analytics other social platforms do, follower count is the only hard number I can share with peers in other newsrooms or people here at GBH.
Numbers aren't everything, especially in public media, thank goodness. But when we make decisions about limited resources they are *a* factor.
gbhnews
@sarae I grew up with it too! Our logo has changed some, but the sound, called a "sting," is one we still use all these years later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1-vp3Ynzlc
gbhnews
@sarae aw thank you it does help!
Also we do share some stories that aren't from Massachusetts. If you see a good one let me know!
Sara
@gbhnews also gotta be honest I remember the wriggly logo thing from when I was a kid and it's a Happy PBS Memory
Sara
@gbhnews If it helps, I don't even live in Boston and I'm following because I think you are Doing It Right
gbhnews
@dl Yes! I work in public media, so we're not as relentlessly numbers-focused as commercial media is. But we do try to be good stewards of the resources that our members give us via supporting us. I mean, even one server is a whole lotta tote bags! (Sorry, had to get an NPR joke in there somewhere).
I feel like I signed up to get on the waiting list for some Mastodon analytics app...shucks, now I forget the name. It will come to me.
Daniel Lowe
@gbhnews I'll follow you but it'd be 100x more awesome to follow multiple accounts on a GBH instance.
Daniel Lowe
@gbhnews A case to make for the business types, too - for an organization, having an instance with a domain name is the blue check of the Fediverse. Since you're on mastodon.social, you could be faking. Probably not, but you could be.
In addition, you would have the sweet traffic metrics, directly, that your bean counters so earnestly desire. Having accounts per-show would segment your metrics appropriately. There's really all kinds of wins to be had here.
Peter Amstutz
The NPR mothership bailing on Twitter but not immediately publishing accounts to follow them in the fediverse felt like a huge missed opportunity. Boston is a tech hub our media orgs need to act like it!
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