It’s a year and one day since you died. At times, I feel your presence. I listen to your music every day. I miss you.
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R.I.Pete
Quick, before everyone else thinks of it. Set the word “SUCCESSION” in Engravers Gothic and export it to a transparent PNG. Download photos of confederate general Mitch McConnell and Republican Johns Thune (R-S.D.), Cornyn (R-Texas), and Barrasso (R-Wyo.). Grab and burn Nicholas Britell’s main title theme from Succession. Import all files into Final Cut Pro or Adobe After Effects. Add dissolves, fades, and film scratch overlays. Export. Upload to YouTube or Vimeo. Embed and amplify via all 500 social media networks. Sit back, relax, and bask in your 15 seconds of glory.
“Succession” is copyright HBO. Mitch McConnell is a wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA.
“Led” is the past tense of “lead.”
L.E.D. Not L.E.A.D.
Example: “Fran, who leads the group, led the meeting.”
When professional publications get the small stuff wrong, it makes us less trusting about the big stuff. Trust in media is already at an all-time low. Don’t alienate liberal arts majors and obsessive compulsives. We may be the last readers standing.
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In search of a digital town square
Ever since an infantile fascist billionaire (hereafter, the IFB) decided to turn Twitter over to the racially hostile anti-science set, folks who previously used that network daily to discuss and amplify topics they cared about have either given up on the very premise of a shared digital commons, continued to post to Twitter while holding their noses, or sought a new digital place to call their own. This post is for the seekers, to compare notes.
These are my personal observations; your views may differ (and that’s more than okay). In this quick survey, I’m omitting specialty platforms like Tribel, Post, and Substack. Feel free to comment, if you like.
The platforms
BlueSky: The most beautifully elegant web interface. Also the best features (other than omission of hashtags). What Twitter should have become. I joined late—Jack didn’t invite me, likely a sign that I was no longer industrially relevant. I have few followers there, and my posts so far get little traction, but that could change. It’s so pretty (and the few friends that use it matter so much to me) that I keep using it, and I reserve judgement as to its future potential. https://bsky.app/profile/zeldman.bsky.social
Threads: Currently my primary alternative to Twitter, and the only place besides Twitter where my posts get at least some response. Not as visually refined as BlueSky, and with a curiously restricted single-hashtag-only policy. Although this editorial decision helps focus the mind, and likely also cuts down on spam, it interferes with amplifying multidimensional posts. But I digress.
Rough edges and restrictive tagging aside, Threads feels like the place that’s likeliest to inherit the mantle of default town square—if any social platform can do that in these new times, that is.
Threads got its huge jump start because, while the IFB was busy finding new ways to make Twitter less useful and more dangerous, Meta leveraged its huge installed Instagram base to give users a more or less instant social network hookup. If it’s easy, and comes with a built-in network of people I already follow, it wins—at least initially.
Meta may also blow their opportunity if they pursue misguided policies, such as impeding (by algorithmic fiat) “political speech” when democracies hang in the balance, regional wars threaten to become world wars, and the climate crisis is approaching a point of no return. https://www.threads.net/@zeldman
Mastodon: How do you decentralize a digital town square? Provide universal social connection without locking in participants? Mastodon (and federation generally) are an attempt to do those things.
These are important and noble goals, but Mastodon (and federation generally) are a long shot at replacing a primary walled garden like Twitter because they require a fair degree of geekery to set up, and the price tag of mass acceptance is ease of setup. (Compare Threads—easy set-up, built-in friends and followers if you already use Instagram—versus the learning curve with Mastodon.)
If BlueSky is MacOS and Threads is Windows, Mastodon is Linux: a great choice for techies, but likely too steep a hill for Ma and Pa Normie. A techie friend invited me to join, and I write there frequently, but, for whatever it’s worth, my Mastodon posts get very little in the way of responses. It is, nonetheless, a highly effective network for most who use it. https://front-end.social/@zeldman
Tumblr: A bit o’ the OG weird wacky wonderful web, and a special place for nonconformist creative types. By its nature, and the nature of its fiercely loyal users, it is a cult jam. I was an early and enthusiastic Tumblr fan, but it was never my main axe, probably because, since the dawn of time itself, I have had zeldman.com.
For a while, when the IFB first started wrecking Twitter, an uptick in Tumblr usage suggested that the funky old network just might take over as the world’s town hall, but this hope was unrealistic, as Tumblr was never about being for everybody, and Tumblristas are mostly happy keeping the platform a home for self-selecting freaks, queers, and creatives.
I’ll note that Tumblr is part of the Automattic family, and I work at Automattic (just celebrated my fifth anniversary there!), but my opinions here are mine alone. BTW—in nearly 30 years of blogging, that’s the first time I’ve used that phrase. https://apartness.tumblr.com
LinkedIn: A comparatively safe social network with a huge network built up over years, hence a great place to share work-related news and ideas.
Some early Twitter adopters of my acquaintance—especially those who mainly write about work topics like UX—have made LinkedIn their primary social home. For most working folks, it is undoubtedly a place to post and amplify at least some of the content that matters to you. OTOH, it’s not a place where I’d share deep takes on CSS (that’s probably Mastodon), cosplay (Tumblr), or personal true confessions (one’s blog, Threads, Twitter before the IFB took over). https://www.linkedin.com/in/zeldman
Twitter itself: During its heyday, before the IFB, and when it was the only game in town, I loved going there to see what clever things my smartest friends were saying, post my own bon mots, and promote content that mattered to me.
I’ll limit my comments on Twitter’s current state to noting that I still post there, from stubbornness as well as habit, and primarily in the (increasingly forlorn) hope that the IFB will eventually tire of his toy, or of the ceaseless financial hemorrhage, and go away, leaving the site to rebirth itself as an open source project or under the care of new, non-fascist owners.
Though the algorithm punishes my posts, and though I’m continually appalled by the MAGA posts, Russian disinformation, racist/ misogynist/ anti-semitic spew, and Trumpian ego of the current owner, I shall, at least for now, continue to defend my tiny turf there.
7 responses to “In search of a digital town square”
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I follow you on Mastodon and even when usually don’t respond to bunch of posts, I can still appreciate people being there. Since I use RSS, I get to read your posts that way usually coming to your website.
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It’s nearly twenty years ago, now, children. Facebook had only recently burst the bounds of Harvard Yard. Twitter had just slipped the bonds of the…
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[…] In search of a digital town square – L. Jeffrey Zeldman, non l’ultimo dei fessi sul web, cerca di fare il punto sullo stato dell’arte del self publishing oggi; […]
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[…] In search of a digital town square – L. Jeffrey Zeldman, talks about the state of the art on mantaining a presence on the web today, with the available tools. […]
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Bluesky introduces open-source, collaborative moderation for federated social media websites: Bluesky was created to put users and communities in control of their social spaces online.…
When you were a kid, what was a meal you always looked forward to?
Spaghetti with Ragu™ sauce. My mother did not enjoy cooking. We ate many convenience meals and enjoyed the heck out of ’em.
“Boys! Ragu!” Mom would holler from the kitchen.
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A Death at Walmart
At age 38, Janikka Perry died of a heart attack at work, on her bakery shift at Walmart in North Little Rock, Arkansas, but you will not find her …
A Death at Walmart
Knowledge management (KM) is the process of organizing, creating, using, and sharing collective knowledge within an organization.
Unlock and unblock
For companies, institutions, and projects struggling to become more efficient and productive—and who these days is not?—solid knowledge management can unlock productivity and unblock awareness of customer needs, awareness of unrecognized gaps, creativity, alignment, product improvements, and greater success.
Conversely, lack of knowledge management—or half-hearted knowledge management that is incomplete and/or not widely shared—holds back any organization afflicted by it.
Most institutions, companies, and groups suffer from at least a partial lack of solid knowledge management. Fortunately, this is fixable by acknowledging the problem, understanding its sources, and addressing them in planned phases. Open source organizations can implement via iterative sprints, traditional companies via top-down project management.
The three main areas of knowledge management
The three main areas of knowledge management are:
- Accumulating knowledge.
- Storing knowledge.
- Sharing knowledge.
Accumulating knowledge happens every time any member of a team achieves a task—or fails to achieve it and analyzes why.
Storing knowledge can be as team-limited as reminders I jot down in my personal Notes app (useful only to me), or widely shared. Shared is better.
Much of our knowledge resides in individual brains. Knowledge management enables it to be shared. Successful knowledge management enables everyone to find it.
Examples of successful knowledge management
Successful knowledge management includes maintaining information in a place where it is easy to access, such as a centrally located online handbook or field guide. Examples include the Automattic Employee Field Guide (limited, public version; a richer version is available to employees only), IBM Design Language, the BBC News Style Guide, A List Apart Style Guide, and the W3C documentation such as Mobile Accessibility at W3C. Those just getting started compiling an organizational field guide—or improving an existing one—may find Workable’s Sample Employee Handbook templates useful, whether or not you use their product.
Taking advantage of all the expertise within an organization is a great way to maximize its potential. Companies have a well of untapped knowledge within their workforce that is lying dormant or siloed to individual staff or departments.
With the proper management structures in place, this knowledge can be found, stored, and made accessible to the wider workforce, offering tangible business – Human Resources: Knowledge Management
Ponder this now, and either proactively agitate for it, or, at the very least, keep awareness of it on a sticky note that you can return to when a C-level executive asks why you or your team haven’t made as much progress, or worked as effectively and efficiently, as possible.
Knowledge management is the secret sauce that enables organizations staffed by smart people to unlock their full potential.
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Read these next:
- The Dogs Won’t Eat It
- The Cult of the Complex (in A List Apart)
In the bubble I blew for myself so it would be safe to grow up, satire was a weapon against evil. Of course I was wrong. Satire is how clever people amuse themselves about things over which they have no control. It saves no victim, stops no crime. The few minds it changes were ready to be changed.
The cruel and evil cannot be shamed. They do not read literature, and they cannot laugh at themselves. Those who laugh at the folly of evil men, they punish with extreme and ghastly pleasure.
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Operation Paperclip (and other crimes)
Evil is rarely a solo project. Horrors and atrocities of the past may provide context for the horrors and atrocities happening right now in Gaza and the Congo.
United States war crimes: Gosh, where to begin? Widespread rape by U.S. servicemen of Japanese, German, and French women; human experiments on non-white U.S. enlisted men “to see how non-white races would react to being mustard gassed;” mass murders and torture in Vietnam, including burning “the membrane of the throats of Vietnamese children and holes in their stomachs by feeding them trioxane heat tablets in the middle of peanut butter cracker sandwiches from their rations” (you know, like you do); My Lai; Abu Ghraib; mass killings and torture of Haitians, including hanging prisoners by their genitals; and so much more. We, the good guys, did this shit. And these are only the crimes we know about.
Operation Paperclip: Immediately after WWII, the U.S. hired more than 1600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, many of them former members (and several of them former leaders) of the Nazi Party. Nice resumes, fellas, come work for us. The Paperclip scientists won major awards in the U.S. for their advancements in aeronautics, and were hugely influential in the U.S. space program. Occasionally, one of the ex-Nazis was discovered to have done something especially heinous during his days in Germany. Never fear, the U.S. made sure to protect him. For instance, in 1951, Walter Schreiber was linked to human experiments conducted by Kurt Bloom at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The U.S. military helped Schreiber emigrate to Argentina, to escape punishment for his crimes. Nice.
American cover-up of Japaneses war crimes: Although institutional racism made white European ex-Nazis more attractive to U.S. hiring teams than their Japanese counterparts, America was nonetheless willing to do favors for Japanese officials accused of crimes against humanity. Thus, immediately after the war, the occupying U.S. force deliberately covered up Japanese war crimes—including human experimentation that had been carried out on Chinese prisoners. Hey, we did it in Tuskegee, why shouldn’t the Japanese do it in China?
Operation Bloodstone: The CIA hired high-ranking Nazi intelligence agents who’d committed war crimes to spy for us inside the Soviet Union, Latin America, Canada, and even domestically within the United States. Hey, why not.
Happy Holidays! Pray for peace and forgiveness.
Designers can either become drivers of business within their organizations, or they can create the businesses they want to drive. We’re entering an era of design entrepreneurship, in which some designers are realizing that they’re not just a designer employed by a business; they’re creative business people whose skill set is design.
—The State of UX in 2024
The quotation above is from a report at trends.uxdesign.cc subtitled “Enter Late-Stage UX.” It is an important thought. And if it seems like a new one to designers in their first decade of work, it will feel quite familiar to to those of us who earned our merit badges during the 1990s and 2000s. See, for instance,
When You Are Your Own Client, Who Are You Going To Make Fun Of At The Bar?
by Jim Coudal (2005),
Starting a Business: Advice from the Trenches
by Kevin Potts (2003), and
THIS WEB BUSINESS, Part One
by Scott Kramer (2000, one of four terrific ALA articles by Scott on that subject).
That widespread, intoxicating entrepreneurial impulse led to a cornucopia of internet content and products (and, eventually, “real-world” products, too). Some flopped. Some flowered for a magical season (or twelve), and then faded as times and the market changed. Some grew and grew, growing communities with them. A few changed the world, for better or worse. (And, occasionally, for both.)
History repeats, but it also changes. If flying from your corporate perch feels like your best response to an industry where the idealism that led you to UX feels somewhat beside the point, go for it! —But first, check your bank balance, and talk with family, friends, and a business advisor, if you have one.
Trusting my ability to use design and words to say something original enabled me to work for myself (and with partners) from 1999–2019, and it was good. Financially, running independent businesses is a perpetual rollercoaster, and it can crush your soul if your beloved creation fails to connect with a community. Some people exit rich. Others just exit. “Don’t burn any bridges” is a cliché that exists for a reason. But I digress.
“Consider entrepreneurship” is but one piece of useful advice in this year’s excellent State of UX report by Fabricio Teixeira and Caio Braga, with deeply clever illustrations by Fabio Benê and significant contributions from Emily Curtin (God bless the editors!) and Laura Vandiver.
I invite you to read and bookmark the whole thing. I plan to reread it several times myself over the next weeks. It’s that deep, and that good. Hat tip to my colleague Jill Quek for sharing it.
Read: The State of UX in 2024.
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Best practices blogger Blogs and Blogging Community content Content First Content-First creativity editorial findability Free Advice Ideas Indieweb industry links Marketing Off My Lawn! Own your content Platforms Publications Publishing Search Standards State of the Web Teapot The Essentials The Profession Wah! writing
Algorithm & Blues
Examining last week’s Verge-vs-Sullivan “Google ruined the web” debate, author Elizabeth Tai writes:
I don’t know any class of user more abused by SEO and Google search than the writer. Whether they’re working for their bread [and] butter or are just writing for fun, writers have to write the way Google wants them to just to get seen.
I wrote extensively about this in Google’s Helpful Content Update isn’t kind to nicheless blogs and How I’m Healing from Algorithms where I said: “Algorithms are forcing us to create art that fits into a neat little box — their neat little box.”
Is the Internet really broken?
So, despite Sullivan’s claims to the contrary, the Internet has sucked for me in the last 10 years. Not only because I was forced to create content in a way that pleases their many rules, but because I have to compete with SEO-optimized garbage fuelled by people with deep pockets and desires for deep pockets.
For digital creators who prefer to contain multitudes, Tai finds hope in abandoning the algorithm game, and accepting a loss of clout, followers, and discoverability as the price of remaining true to your actual voice and interests:
However, this year, I regained more joy as a writer when I gave upon SEO and decided to become an imperfect gardener of my digital garden. So there’s hope for us yet.
As for folks who don’t spend their time macro-blogging—“ordinary people” who use rather than spend significant chunks of their day creating web content—Tai points out that this, statistically at least a more important issue than the fate and choices of the artists formerly known as digerati, remains unsolved, but with glimmers of partially solution-shaped indicators in the form of a re-emerging indieweb impulse:
Still, as much as I agree with The Verge’s conclusions, I feel that pointing fingers is useless. The bigger question is, How do we fix the Internet for the ordinary person?
The big wigs don’t seem to want to answer that question thoroughly, perhaps because there’s no big money in this, so people have been trying to find solutions on their own.
We have the Indieweb movement, the Fediverse like Mastodon and Substack rising to fill the gap. It’s a ragtag ecosystem humming beneath Google’s layer on the Internet. And I welcome its growth.
For more depth and fuller flavor, I encourage you to read the entirety of “Is the internet really broken?” on elizabethtai.com. (Then read her other writings, and follow her on our fractured social web.)
“The independent content creator refuses to die.” – this website, ca. 1996, and again in 2001, paraphrasing Frank Zappa paraphrasing Edgar Varese, obviously.
Hat tip: Simon Cox.
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Resistance makes side projects hard
Today marks 15 full months that I’ve been working on a side project called Crafd. It’s a community for people who make things by hand: In that time …
Resistance makes side projects hard
For more than two decades, patients of an OB/GYN named Robert Hadden warned Columbia University that he was sexually inappropriate and abusive. One …
How Columbia Ignored Women, Undermined Prosecutors and Protected a Predator For More Than 20 Years
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A faster horse
“The user is never wrong” means, when a user snags on a part of your UX that doesn’t work for her, she’s not making a mistake, she’s doing you a favor.
To benefit from this favor, you must pay vigilant attention, prioritize the discovery, dig deeply enough to understand the problem, and then actually solve it.
In so doing, you will not only be secretly thanking the user who discovered your error, you’ll be aiding all of your users, and ultimately, attracting new ones.
Think about this tomorrow. For today, Happy Labor Day to all who toil.
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Through Your Tears & Sorrow
My daughter Ava has written a new essay about autism, trauma, and the mysteries of socialization.
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