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Module 6: Tumblr Media Switch Up

Confession: While I consider myself relatively familiar with social media, I have largely avoided Instagram. Part of me thinks that it’s a narcissistic platform but if I’m being honest, the real reason I haven’t spent much time on Instagram is because I basically hate most pictures of myself. In most of the pictures of myself that I actually like, my daughter is taking up part of the frame. 

(I’m on the right)

It turns out that I’m not the only person who feels self conscious about their selfies. A May 2017 study by the Royal Society for Public Health of 1,500 people ages 14-24 found that Instagram was the worst social media site for users’ mental health. Instagram users in particular reported that the site contributed to poor body image and increased anxiety.

While I’m not sold on Instagram, it’s incredibly popular. The Pew Research Center reported in March that Instagram was the third most popular social network among American adults after YouTube and Facebook. While I’ve long associated Instagram with more feminine interests, I was surprised to learn that men ages 18-24 are the biggest demographic on the site (source). Ninety percent of Instagram users are under age 35 and 32% of teens say that Instagram is the social network that is most important to them. Sixty percent of Instagram users - 500 million people - use the site every day. Should I join them?

While one can share videos on Instagram, photos receive more engagement than video. Besides opting to post a photo rather than a video, how can one increase engagement with their Instagram posts? Posts with locations receive 79% more engagement while posts with additional handles receive 56% more engagement and posts with at least one hashtag receive 12.6% more engagement. Knowing that I can potentially increase engagement on my Instagram posts by including locations, other handles and hashtags makes the idea of becoming more active on Instagram seem more manageable.

Sixty-five percent of the most popular posts by brands on Instagram feature products (source). However, one of the really creative ways I saw a brand using Instagram was Vodka for Dog People, a profile started by Tito’s Vodka to promote the company’s love of animals and encourage pet adoption. It’s a lot of pictures of dogs next to bottles of vodka which is a fun and compelling way to increase interest in the brand.

Something that’s not obvious to those who aren’t familiar with Instagram is that you can’t share links in your posts, meaning that brands have to get creative to sell their products. On the Ikea USA Instagram page, there’s a link in the bio with the most recent posts that featured Ikea products.

When you click on the link in the bio, then click on the relevant post, the items for sale at Ikea are labeled with numbers.

Click on the item that interests you and the page from the Ikea website will pop up, showing you details about the item, as well as how to order it online or find it in stores.

I still don’t see myself as someone who will use Instagram on a regular basis but having looked into it a little more thoroughly, I don’t feel as intimidated by it, even though I’m not a Kardashian.

[katzindc-blog]

Module 3: Tumblr Media Switch Up (Medium.com)

This week for the Social Media Switch Up, I selected Medium.com. Full disclosure: I used Medium.com personally once. In October, I testified in front of the DC Council regarding the Universal Paid Leave Act. I put some thought into my testimony and wanted to share it with people on Facebook so I put it on Medium. Uploading my post was pretty straightforward and my friends got to see it so it was all good and I haven’t used it since.

“Please be nice to me, I am so nervous.”

Stories on Medium indicate how long they will take users to read. For example, here’s how the top of one recent story looked:

Unlike Blogger and similar to Tumblr, Medium sorts posts by topic rather than author, though users can opt to follow the profiles of writers whose work they enjoy. Users can up-vote content and leave comments. Users can also highlight portions of text that they find compelling so future readers can see what other users thought was interesting. Here’s how a highlighted section looked in the story about Airbnb mentioned above:

Since Medium’s founding, it has struggled to identify a sustainable path to profitability. In 2017, Williams announced that Medium would be laying off one-third of its staff and closing offices in New York and DC as the site experiments with potential revenue streams. One such way is by selling memberships that allow users to read an unlimited number of stories per month (non-members are limited to three stories/month) as well as audio version of stories.

As the passage above shows, Medium’s layout is simply black text on a white background with very few graphics. When I uploaded my testimony, I didn’t add any graphics. While it feels almost primitive compared to other sites, Medium’s basic format makes it very readable.

The topics Medium is organized into - culture, tech, entrepreneurship, self, media, politics, design and science - suggest that their users are highly educated and upper-middle class. There’s an emphasis on technology - popular stories when I was looking at the site included cybersecurity, blockchain, getting and losing jobs in IT, bitcoin and Python. It’s also dotted with personal essays, the topics of which were largely inspired by Father’s Day (with titles like “My Father, Star Trek, and Me” and “My Father, the Eater, the Trickster King”).

There are surprisingly few articles about current events on Medium (“Trump and the Migrant Children - what’s happening and why” and “Bearing witness to America’s cruelty” on the recent humanitarian crisis on the southern border). Then again, I imagine the people behind Medium think that there are many, many publications out there that cover current events.

Looking at the way Netflix used Medium, the layout looks slightly different than it does for non-brands but not outlandishly so.

Similar to the Airbnb post above, the Netflix post on Medium describes new directions for their technical strategy. Aside from the author, the post doesn’t look different from those by other authors.

In conclusion, Medium.com appears to be an interesting option for writers looking for a place to share their work as well as a good choice for readers looking for new perspectives.

[katzindc-blog]

Module 2: Tumblr Media Switch Up (Tumblr)

This week for the Media Switch Up, I selected Tumblr. Writing about Tumblr on Tumblr feels very meta. I used to keep a Tumblr blog where I would post interesting quotes from the news and I also had a Tumblr where I would post the various memes my husband sent me during the day. I didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to Tumblr but it was interesting to see what posts received a lot of shares (I think my most popular by far was a picture of kittens in a desk drawer). 

I’ve always liked Tumblr for the same reason it confuses me - what exactly are people doing here? If Facebook is for sharing pictures of your kid with your old friends from high school, LinkedIn is for trying to impress people (I mean “networking”), Snapchat and Instagram are for pictures, and YouTube and Vimeo are for videos, what is Tumblr for? 

I still don’t know.

In their own words, “Tumblr is so easy to use that it’s hard to explain.We made it really, really simple for people to make a blog and put whatever they want on it. Stories, photos, GIFs, TV shows, links, quips, dumb jokes, smart jokes, Spotify tracks, mp3s, videos, fashion, art, deep stuff. Tumblr is 418 million different blogs, filled with literally whatever.”

Looking at the trending posts on Tumblr, we have a picture of Harry Styles, a quote about unrequited love, a scene with a chesty anime character, a picture of a Hannah Montana bracelet apparently on sale at a garage sale, a snippet of dialogue from a TV show, a series of gifs related to pride, a picture of a bonfire ... yeah, I don’t understand any of this. 

At the same time, like I said, the freeform nature of Tumblr drew me to the site in the first place. The header at the top of Tumblr allows visitors to pick trending, staff picks, text, photos, gifs, quotes, links, chats, audio, video and asks. Based on the interests featured on the “trending” page, it seems that the Tumblr audience skews feminine, based on the pictures of makeup, outfits, and Jake Gyllenhaal. 

Research by Statista found that 27% of internet users in the US who use Tumblr were male as of January 2018 compared to 14% who were female. However, a 2015 Pew Internet study found that 11% of women internet users use Tumblr compared to 10% of male internet users. 15% of both Hispanic and black non-Hispanic internet users said they use Tumblr in the Pew study compared to 9% of white internet users. The users also skewed younger, lower income (perhaps students?) and more urban. Looking at Tumblr users, this could be seasonal but the site seems very LGBTQ friendly. 

There are also a lot of quotes and gifs related to trust, mental health, happiness, depression, and so on. There are also a lot of pictures of food, animals and jokes, and landscapes/nature. Unlike Reddit, the videos on Tumblr are gif length. While looking for promoted blogs on Tumblr, I found this one with Rep. Mark Takano from California “There Will Be Charts.”  I tried to find out what the Pew Research Center has learned about Tumblr and instead found the Pew Internet Tumblr. I also found the Vogue Tumblr, the layout of which I find compelling because it doesn’t look like the other Tumblr blogs I’ve seen.  

Hi Riri. 

Similar to Twitter, Tumblr users have their own pages or blogs where they can like or reblog posts shared by other users. Tumblr users can also use hashtags. 

In conclusion, I still have some confusion about Tumblr but it seems like a pretty friendly place. 

[katzindc-blog]

Module 1: Tumblr Media Switch Up (Reddit)

This week, I selected Reddit.com. Full disclosure: I rarely go to Reddit because it freaks me out. Reddit frequently seems like headquarters for a lot of the negativity that’s on the internet. For example, Reddit was the launchpad when ne’er-do-wells hacked celebrities’ mobile devices and shared their personal photos and videos (link). That said, I’ve been told repeatedly, and have seen for myself in some cases, that specific subreddits are more helpful and less of a free-for-all than others. 

Looking at the first ten posts on Reddit’s home page offers a brief snapshot of the users’ interests (the default setting is to show the most popular posts on the home page). The top post when I looked at Reddit was a still from an upcoming Shia LeBouf movie followed by a promoted post about a video game, a post by a user claiming his child drew a decent picture of a dog, a cute animal video, a video from a thunderstorm, an update on the season premiere of Better Call Saul, a post from the BlackPeopleTwitter subreddit, a motivational quote, a video of someone with lots of dogs, and the thunderstorm video again. while cursory, this suggests that Reddit users are interested in movies and television, video games, animals and weather. That said, I thought it was interesting to see a motivational quote rank so highly in the list of popular posts. 

I didn’t find it surprising that the posts about animals and weather were so highly rated since those are pretty mainstream interests. The popular posts suggest that people using the site are frequently doing so for leisure purposes (unlike a site like LinkedIn, for example), indicating that the users are people who have free time and good internet connections (enabling easy access to videos and images). That may not narrow down the demographics much but it would imply that college students are among heavy Reddit users, as well as possibly individuals who are middle class and have disposable income.  

The most popular posts are very heavy on images and videos. Additional popular posts included a post from the subreddit WholesomeMemes, a data visualization, the latest cover of Time magazine, and a video from a subreddit called OddlySatisfying.

The promoted post I saw in Reddit came from a user called Diamond Entertainment that appears to be promoting a video game. Interestingly, on the page for DiamondEntertainment, Redditors offered feedback about the game’s description and DiamondEntertainment offered thoughtful replies. A Redditor actually responded to say that they appreciated their answers and wished them success, which seemed unusual for Reddit. Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought it was.