5 ms·

On social media, thousands see your post but only a few react. They're the ones that found your post much more interesting than the average person who saw it.

On social media, thousands see your post but only a few react. They're the ones that found your post much more interesting than the average person who saw it. In real life, only a few people hear what you say but they feel socially obligated to react in some way. So you get bland, polite reactions. They're the people that, if they'd seen your post on social media, wouldn't have replied at all. In a nutshell: on social media, you broadcast to a huge potential audience, and your actual audience chooses you. In real life, your ideas only get to a small number of people who may not have chosen to listen to you. The interest levels of these two audiences are naturally very different.

bityard 4y ago
> On social media, thousands see your post That's either wildly optimistic, or most people spend a lot more time building up their online persona than I do.
- lazide 4y ago
  How many do you think read this reply? At least that many, I'd wager.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    that is actually an interesting question. it would be nice to see some statistics of how many people viewed the discussions, like the number of comments and upvotes. maybe dang could give us an idea about the average number of views related to number of comments and votes. is it 10 to one? 100 to 1? is it a similar factor for most stories? actually, i don't think it's linear because higher upvoted stories have a higher likelihood of being read because some of us use tools to only see stories with a high vote threshold
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      I feel like that would bias things, but it would be interesting to see once a thread “dies.” It’d even be easy to do just parsing access logs and adding a number in a db. That’d help handle the scale, assuming we are seeing mostly-cached pages here.
      - em-bee 4y ago
        i actually wondered about the effect it would have. good idea to only do it after discussion is closed.
    - tetris11 4y ago
      Perhaps related - The 1% Rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule?wprov=sfla1 > In Internet culture, the 1% rule is a general rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website add content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.
      - noobermin 4y ago
        It would be nice if this could be quantified...given such a distribution is readily determinable and given websites already collect so much data anyway.
        lazide 4y ago
        It can be, and is - but generally consider trade secrets and not disclosed.
- codetrotter 4y ago
  TikTok, Reddit, Hacker News. These are all social media where your posts has a good chance of being seen by thousands of people. Facebook and Instagram, not so much unless one does exactly like you say, building a following.
  - bityard 4y ago
    I don't know what TikTok is but Reddit and Hacker News are not "social media", they are just discussion forums. Not all online communities are social media. The key feature of social media is that you chose WHO to follow instead of WHAT to follow. That's the part that makes it "social", because you create a graph of social connections as a fundamental part of being a user of the site. This is, not incidentally, what makes social media extremely attractive to advertisers.
    - codetrotter 4y ago
      It’s gonna depend on your definition of social media. For me Reddit, HN and TikTok are all social media. And I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media supports my view at least in part, of these sites as such: > Social media are interactive digital channels that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. Check. > Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications. Yes I think so. > User-generated content—such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions—is the lifeblood of social media. Definitely true of all three. > Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization. Check. > Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups. Also true IMO.
- civilized 4y ago
  But how would you know? Typically you don't see the number of views, you only see the replies. You can see the impression count on Twitter, and typically it's much, much greater than the number of replies or other interactions.
- noobermin 4y ago
  I'm a small persona, but for me the order of magnitude is wrong but the sentiment is correct I think. Generally the times I notice I get feedback, it's may be when I get seen by >100 people generally by interacting with popular posts vs. my "mutuals" who are just dozens if that at a time, and it's usually crickets or <5 likes for spicy things. It's definitely selection bias for outspoken / opinionated people who care about a topic.
TillE 4y ago
This is actually an excellent point, a self-evident one which I hadn't really considered before. There is a vast chasm of difference between online micro-communities (eg, I'm a regular in a couple Twitch channels with 10-20 viewers) and the average large subreddit, and this is one key reason why.

bityard 4y ago

> On social media, thousands see your post That's either wildly optimistic, or most people spend a lot more time building up their online persona than I do.

lazide 4y ago
How many do you think read this reply? At least that many, I'd wager.
- em-bee 4y ago
  that is actually an interesting question. it would be nice to see some statistics of how many people viewed the discussions, like the number of comments and upvotes. maybe dang could give us an idea about the average number of views related to number of comments and votes. is it 10 to one? 100 to 1? is it a similar factor for most stories? actually, i don't think it's linear because higher upvoted stories have a higher likelihood of being read because some of us use tools to only see stories with a high vote threshold
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    I feel like that would bias things, but it would be interesting to see once a thread “dies.” It’d even be easy to do just parsing access logs and adding a number in a db. That’d help handle the scale, assuming we are seeing mostly-cached pages here.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      i actually wondered about the effect it would have. good idea to only do it after discussion is closed.
  - tetris11 4y ago
    Perhaps related - The 1% Rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule?wprov=sfla1 > In Internet culture, the 1% rule is a general rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website add content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.
    - noobermin 4y ago
      It would be nice if this could be quantified...given such a distribution is readily determinable and given websites already collect so much data anyway.
      - lazide 4y ago
        It can be, and is - but generally consider trade secrets and not disclosed.
codetrotter 4y ago
TikTok, Reddit, Hacker News. These are all social media where your posts has a good chance of being seen by thousands of people. Facebook and Instagram, not so much unless one does exactly like you say, building a following.
- bityard 4y ago
  I don't know what TikTok is but Reddit and Hacker News are not "social media", they are just discussion forums. Not all online communities are social media. The key feature of social media is that you chose WHO to follow instead of WHAT to follow. That's the part that makes it "social", because you create a graph of social connections as a fundamental part of being a user of the site. This is, not incidentally, what makes social media extremely attractive to advertisers.
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    It’s gonna depend on your definition of social media. For me Reddit, HN and TikTok are all social media. And I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media supports my view at least in part, of these sites as such: > Social media are interactive digital channels that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. Check. > Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications. Yes I think so. > User-generated content—such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions—is the lifeblood of social media. Definitely true of all three. > Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization. Check. > Social media helps the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups. Also true IMO.
civilized 4y ago
But how would you know? Typically you don't see the number of views, you only see the replies. You can see the impression count on Twitter, and typically it's much, much greater than the number of replies or other interactions.
noobermin 4y ago
I'm a small persona, but for me the order of magnitude is wrong but the sentiment is correct I think. Generally the times I notice I get feedback, it's may be when I get seen by >100 people generally by interacting with popular posts vs. my "mutuals" who are just dozens if that at a time, and it's usually crickets or <5 likes for spicy things. It's definitely selection bias for outspoken / opinionated people who care about a topic.

TillE 4y ago

This is actually an excellent point, a self-evident one which I hadn't really considered before. There is a vast chasm of difference between online micro-communities (eg, I'm a regular in a couple Twitch channels with 10-20 viewers) and the average large subreddit, and this is one key reason why.