With the intention to let folks find out about new articles on martinfowler.com, I
submit bulletins on social media. I have been doing this for a very long time,
beginning on Twitter again in 2008. After the muskover, social media
turned moderately extra fragmented, and I now submit bulletins on 4 social
media platforms: LinkedIn, X, Fediverse (Mastodon), and Bluesky. It’s kind of
tedious, nevertheless it would not take too lengthy to repeat/paste the bulletins on
every web site, with a little bit of tweaking as essential. (I additionally submit bulletins
to my RSS feed. If I had been following me, I would use
RSS.)
Occasionally, I take a look at the site visitors on these websites. (Final time was
in 2025) The principle factor
I am focused on is how a lot engagement I get from every service, so I can
get a way of their significance for my bulletins. There are three knowledge
gadgets that I can use to sense this: retweets, likes, and replies. Here is
some plots of that knowledge for my posts over the past couple of months (19
complete)
Determine 1: variety of retweets for posts from June 16 to Sep 6 2026
Determine 2: variety of replies for a similar interval
Determine 3: variety of likes for a similar interval
I do not like utilizing easy averages to match issues, they’re typically
deceptive and blur helpful info. So these plots mix a
strip chart (exhibiting every submit as a degree, with some horizontal jitter) and
a field plot (to indicate median and quartiles). This fashion we are able to see the entire
distribution whereas additionally having the ability to examine helpful summaries inside them.
this, there is a clear rating between the companies. LinkedIn
is obvious chief at engagement numbers. I are inclined to take the retweets most
critically, since they recommend a need to advocate a submit for others to
think about. I am going to chop off the higher outliers there to zoom in on the core
knowledge.
Determine 4: Retweets, zooming in on the core knowledge
LinkedIn clearly has an edge there, with X a transparent second, its higher
quartile is under LinkedIn’s median. Bluesky and Mastodon are tiny in
comparability, their higher quartiles are under X’s decrease quartile, though
Mastdon’s is visibly above that of Bluesky.
this knowledge, there is a sturdy argument for stopping
bulletins on Bluesky and Mastodon, as they get such little response. I
will proceed with them, nonetheless, since they’re open platforms – and I’ve
a transparent desire for open platforms over the walled gardens of LinkedIn
and X.
One other manner of judging that is to take a look at supply site visitors for the web site,
in spite of everything the entire level of saying posts is to convey readers. Here is
some knowledge on that, taken from my web site analytics:
Determine 5: sources of site visitors in 90 days previous to Sep 7
2026
This displays the info above, LinkedIn is clearly a much bigger supply of
site visitors than X, which is way above bluesky (we won’t actually assess Mastodon
right here, however I anticipate it might even be a really skinny line). However even LinkedIn is
a minor supply of site visitors in comparison with google. And google’s 300,000 or so is
a small a part of the 1.7M visits the location obtained in these 90 days.
I final did this evaluation in early 2025.
Evaluating the field plots for the retweets signifies how issues have
modified.
Determine 6: In contrast retweets from posts in mid 2026 to
early 2025.
LinkedIn has grown a bit of bit, X has dropped notably, and Bluesky has
dropped dramatically.
Utilizing social media
The principle level of this submit was to share what I am seeing for social
media site visitors. However that is additionally a good time for me to say how I take advantage of
social media in 2026 AD.
In relation to writing to social media, virtually all the pieces I do is
these bulletins of posts on my web site. When Twitter was dominant, I would
additionally share small ideas, and posts to attention-grabbing issues I would run into. I
now do this in my fragments posts, a lot of which
are dots on the above graphs. I desire utilizing the
fragments, which is basically rediscovering the olde hyperlink weblog,
since I’ve extra freedom in what I write there, do not have to repeat to
a number of websites, and it reveals up in my (most well-liked) RSS feed.
I do a bit extra in relation to studying this social media. I do learn
any replies to announcement posts, as I am naturally curious to see what
folks say about them. I additionally use social media extra usually, in a lot the
identical manner as I did within the Twitter days. That’s, I’ve a hard and fast record of
folks I observe, and I learn their posts in reverse-chronological order. I
actively keep away from any sort of “algorithmic” feed. That makes LinkedIn fairly hopeless for me, as there’s
no manner to try this over there, the engagementmaxxing feed is pressured onto my
residence web page. So I ignore it, which is a pity contemplating
how far more engagement it generates than its rivals as of late.
X additionally pushes its “For You” feed of slop, however I can circumvent it, as
I’ve at all times completed, by constructing lists. I put folks I am focused on on
these lists, and browse these. Mastodon and
Bluesky make it simpler to do that, which is one in every of their benefits. If
somebody posts on a number of social networks, I desire to observe them on
Bluesky, as a consequence of being an open platform and its user-interface. I additionally
proceed to make use of RSS feeds once I can, and I am glad that companies like
Substack assist them.
Given all that, I have not actually seen the issues that individuals
complain about for X and Bluesky. Sometimes I get some pests exhibiting up
in my replies, however that is uncommon. Twitter was a large number in its day too, and
sticking to my lists insulated me from all that. I actually want LinkedIn
gave me that capacity, perhaps there’s some posts on there that are not slop
(and sometimes AI-generated slop). However because it stands, it is unhappy that
the most important web site for me by way of engagement can be the one I am unable to
stand.
(I may additionally point out that the one social media web site I do take pleasure in,
and contribute to, is BoardGameGeek. It is
attention-grabbing to see how properly it is held up through the years. Being targeted on
a distinct segment interest certainly helps.)
