As you know, there is a battle in social networks, in my opinion there are too many, which is good and is also bad. The good part is that there are plenty of options, there are social networks for whatever you need to do, the most common: twitter, Facebook, instagram, snapchat. There are other less popular but also quite important, like LinkedIn, twitch or Flickr and not because they are not great platforms, but they have a niche.
So, my question, do we really need all those social networks?
This question comes to my mind quite often, because, I don’t like to have an account in every social network that becomes popular, I became a twitter user around 2008 I think, yes, it was 2008. I was user of Facebook a bit earlier I think, I’m not sure, but both nets were there a while before I joined them.
Then I used to use Instagram, until it was bought by Facebook, in that time I was also using Flickr (which I still use), so, leaving instagram was pretty easy for me. That was the time when I started to ask to myself, why the hell should I use instagram or Facebook?, just because they are free?, because they “connect” me to [old] friends?
Then I realized that the popularity of these social networks is because they are free, the cost nothing to the user, they just open the browser, create an account and you are ready, you might want to install their app in your mobile if you want to have access on the go, but again, it costs nothing to you. Now another question, who is paying all the time of those servers? who is paying to all those engineers?, who is paying to all the people who work to keep that gears rolling?. The answer is You. Yes you did, yes you did!
Yes, you are paying, this social network needs you more than anyone else to stay alive, you provide the content that they use to show to other users, those users will get interested in the social network and keep getting back. Now, this is not wrong, in some cases the Social Network abuses requiring you to give total permission of usage of the content you make, but hey, you are having the exposition you want. Don’t you want to be in that deal?, get your own server.
It’s a fair trade, the Social Network gets your content, you get exposed. But, do you get paid for that?
What if you don’t provide all your content to the SN but just an excerpt, link to a page you manage that probably have ads and get paid for your content with money, not just exposition?.
Well, that’s something that I’m trying to achieve, by now, I’m trying to post everything I need to post (that deserves to be (and remembered)) here. Why?, well, if I post a picture in twitter the only one that makes money about it is twitter, I get just “expo”, but I took the picture and share it. I’m not going to ask to twitter to pay me for the picture, we already have the deal, I post content, they get audience for me, so, to make money I link to my blog, where there are ads and there is where I can make money.
Making money from ads is possible, is not my goal, I just want to make a bit of extra money, let’s say, to create more content or simply make this blog sustainable.
Also, I want people to know other stuff I do, not only what I post on twitter/Facebook, my blog should be the point of reference about me online instead of some SN. My pictures should belong to me, not to the SN. If I’m making content, they should visit where I post the content, not the SN.
