With the intention to let folks learn about new articles on martinfowler.com, I
put up 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
grew to become moderately extra fragmented, and I now put up bulletins on 4 social
media platforms: LinkedIn, X, Fediverse (Mastodon), and Bluesky. It is a bit
tedious, however it does not take too lengthy to repeat/paste the bulletins on
every website, with a little bit of tweaking as essential. (I additionally put up bulletins
to my RSS feed. If I have been following me, I might use
RSS.)
Every now and then, I take a look at the visitors on these websites. (Final time was
in 2025) The primary factor
I am fascinated about 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. This 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 check issues, they’re typically
deceptive and blur helpful data. So these plots mix a
strip chart (exhibiting every put up as some extent, with some horizontal jitter) and
a field plot (to point out 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 providers. LinkedIn
is obvious chief at engagement numbers. I are inclined to take the retweets most
critically, since they counsel a want to suggest a put up for others to
take into account. 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 robust 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 means of judging that is to take a look at supply visitors for the web site,
in any case the entire level of asserting posts is to deliver readers. This is
some knowledge on that, taken from my web site analytics:
Determine 5: sources of visitors in 90 days previous to Sep 7
2026
This displays the information above, LinkedIn is clearly an even bigger supply of
visitors than X, which is much above bluesky (we will not actually assess Mastodon
right here, however I anticipate it might even be a really skinny line). However even LinkedIn is
a minor supply of visitors in comparison with google. And google’s 300,000 or so is
a small a part of the 1.7M visits the location acquired 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 somewhat bit, X has dropped notably, and Bluesky has
dropped dramatically.
Utilizing social media
The primary level of this put up was to share what I am seeing for social
media visitors. However that is additionally an honest time for me to say how I take advantage of
social media in 2026 AD.
Relating to writing to social media, nearly every part I do is
these bulletins of posts on my website. When Twitter was dominant, I might
additionally share small ideas, and posts to fascinating issues I might run into. I
now try this in my fragments posts, a lot of which
are dots on the above graphs. I want 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 terms of 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 means as I did within the Twitter days. That’s, I’ve a hard and fast checklist of
folks I comply with, 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 means to try this over there, the engagementmaxxing feed is compelled onto my
residence web page. So I ignore it, which is a pity contemplating
how rather more engagement it generates than its rivals lately.
X additionally pushes its “For You” feed of slop, however I can circumvent it, as
I’ve at all times executed, by constructing lists. I put folks I am fascinated about on
these lists, and skim 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 want to comply with them on
Bluesky, because 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 providers like
Substack assist them.
Given all that, I have never actually observed the issues that folks
complain about for X and Bluesky. Often 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 means, 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 largest website for me by way of engagement can also be the one I am unable to
stand.
(I may also point out that the one social media website I do get pleasure from,
and contribute to, is BoardGameGeek. It is
fascinating to see how effectively it is held up over time. Being targeted on
a distinct segment interest absolutely helps.)