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> What makes this news more interesting is the fact that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has abandoned its Threads account but is still maintaining i

by nirui 3y ago

> What makes this news more interesting is the fact that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has abandoned its Threads account but is still maintaining its self-hosted Mastodon accounts online. The title made it sound like BBC have picked a side, but the reality could be that they still got a few more months left in their experiment with Mastodon. Maybe it's still too early to tell anything concrete at this time.

hgrtegwerh 3y ago
threads supposedly intends to eventually federate with activitypub, so it's entirely possible the bbc is just betting on the one with the more active users, assuming eventually threads will pull in their feeds anyway.
- dmix 3y ago
  I highly doubt BBC's social media managers are making long term bets on smaller social media networks eventually investing in activitypub. IRL they probably got little engagement vs the time they were investing so decided to just keep at least one Twitter style feed around so they don't completely abandon the concept of "microblogging"... as the vast, vast bulk of the journalism industry continues to use Twitter and that idea isn't dying any time soon. Having a backup comms platform is deemed valuable enough even if it doesn't drive high business value. Edit: others have pointed out they still use X so I guess the whole point is moot
  - shapefrog 3y ago
    At the scale of BBC's social media managers I hope they are not on the x.com website typing in updates and clicking post. They should be using custom software and be able to redirect / duplicate the distribution of their news to different or multiple outlets with little more effort than a few lines of code.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      >I hope they are not on the x.com website typing in updates and clicking post. Is there any form of API access exposed to third parties anymore on notTwitter?
robga 3y ago
Definitely. BBC News Labs has a drawer full of “Completed” projects as seen at https://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/ https://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/
- M2Ys4U 3y ago
  News Labs isn't running the Mastodon trial, it's a different team in BBC R&D with a different remit

by nirui 3y ago

hgrtegwerh 3y ago

threads supposedly intends to eventually federate with activitypub, so it's entirely possible the bbc is just betting on the one with the more active users, assuming eventually threads will pull in their feeds anyway.

dmix 3y ago
I highly doubt BBC's social media managers are making long term bets on smaller social media networks eventually investing in activitypub. IRL they probably got little engagement vs the time they were investing so decided to just keep at least one Twitter style feed around so they don't completely abandon the concept of "microblogging"... as the vast, vast bulk of the journalism industry continues to use Twitter and that idea isn't dying any time soon. Having a backup comms platform is deemed valuable enough even if it doesn't drive high business value. Edit: others have pointed out they still use X so I guess the whole point is moot
- shapefrog 3y ago
  At the scale of BBC's social media managers I hope they are not on the x.com website typing in updates and clicking post. They should be using custom software and be able to redirect / duplicate the distribution of their news to different or multiple outlets with little more effort than a few lines of code.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    >I hope they are not on the x.com website typing in updates and clicking post. Is there any form of API access exposed to third parties anymore on notTwitter?

robga 3y ago

Definitely. BBC News Labs has a drawer full of “Completed” projects as seen at https://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/ https://bbcnewslabs.co.uk/projects/

M2Ys4U 3y ago
News Labs isn't running the Mastodon trial, it's a different team in BBC R&D with a different remit