|
👋 Hello #fediverse! I'm going into a meeting at 4ET to talk about our newsroom's social media options. If you think our station and other #NPR stations should have a Mastodon server and a broader presence in the #fediverse, pls boost this post. If you have thoughts, please reply, I want to hear them! 32 comments
I think it's worth understanding what the barriers are to stations or networks establishing their own servers. As the social editor, if I see a new platform and think, "oh, that's interesting," I have the power to open an account there. Setting up a server for a station or a network would involve the cooperation of IT, marketing, and legal folks. Big stations and big networks have to do a fair amount of prep and due diligence before they make a move like that. 1/x So it's not just the cost of setting up/running a server (which people tell me here could be quite minimal). It's the man-hours of prep, setup, and ongoing maintenance for things like moderation, tech support, etc. that come into the equation. And the other half of that equation is the assessment the people involved make of the opportunity. Math is a big part of that. How many users are on that network, and how many of those people are likely to see or engage? 2/2 @gbhnews Yeah, we understand this. But still: you have full control--not at the whims of a psycho with more money than sense, or a government, or whatever. Also: you get the added cred of verifying your own team. It's hard to know here who is legit, imposters are easy to create in this system--an institution server is a good solution to this. @mem_somerville Yes. It's just that some people seem to think that the only cost is the cost to set up a server. for a station or a network a lot more goes into it. @gbhnews That's fair. I think I would favor NPR itself sets up an instance and member stations move their accounts to it. No idea how feasible any of that is, but it seems like a good direction to go in.  @theotherotherone @gbhnews Unfortunately, “member stations” is just what NPR calls their customers, which are independent public radio stations that purchase programming from NPR. Many independent stations are already struggling to pay the outrageous fees to NPR, so adding on one more is probably not going to fly. @bhawthorne @gbhnews Right, which is why I think it would make sense for NPR to take on the cost of an instance and member stations just have accounts.  @gbhnews  @gbhnews In my view, It’s more important to be on the platform and interacting than it is to host your own instance right now. My parallel is email. In the 90s, nobody really cared if your email was an ISP instead of your own domain. Let’s welcome journalists here, however they get here. Like the rest of us, as they get acclimated they might put something on their domain, but it’s more important to get on the platform and become a member of the community than anything else @gbhnews All fair points to raise. I’d argue that joining a news-oriented instance is probably good enough for most NPR stations. Having your own instance is great but not really necessary.  @gbhnews With respect to the maths of it, you would have a huge 'first mover' advantage. It'd be a gamble, for sure, on whether or not the Fediverse will continue to grow but getting in early, working out how to and how not to do things here could end up being priceless when your competitors are elsewhere still and then late to the party. And then you get to be the organisation who go to conferences and meetings to show others how (not) to do it. Brand leaders in a new field. @gbhnews One thing I would say is that you need to be prepared to tell the higher ups that what you were doing on Twitter may not work well here. It may need a modified or completely different approach. As the social team there, it's a hugely exciting opportunity to become more inventive again. @gbhnews And offer to start small, with clear checkpoints along the way, to see how it goes and if it isn't working, low costs, no harm done. We learnt a lot for the next time.  @gbhnews most engagement experiments I've seen have been very anecdotal but show a higher engagement and response level here even with lower follower counts. I haven't seen anything citation/business model worthy but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Another idea I've seen that's interesting but high overhead is for #NPR/PBS affiliate servers to offer accounts to members. This could have a lot of benefits if it worked, smoothing onboarding issues etc. @gbhnews bear in mind you don't have to setup a server for others to use. Instead, you can restrict it to your station and reporters, just like the website. That would eliminate the need for moderation or user support. @gbhnews  @gbhnews For an organization like yours and for public broadcasters as a whole, running your own instance makes a lot of sense. You don't have to open it to the public - restrict it to your ("your" being WGBH or NPR member stations or NPR and PBS member stations) internal users, like main station accounts and individual journalists. Moderation of your own users will be minimal. Resource demands may vary as popularity grows, but in terms of being worth the time to post on Fedi -- @gbhnews -- your audience is way more likely than the audience of, say, a local NBC affiliate, to be here and be paying attention. Outside of the loony fringe that everyone has blocked, we in the fediverse largely skew anywhere from truly left to mainstream Democrat. "gbhnews@social.npr.org" or "gbhnews@publicbroadcasters.social" or something is a lot more instantly credible than "gbhnews@mastodon.social", and you're not depending on a random German co to keep it alive. @gbhnews You're also large enough that you could run your truly-own instance. Herding cats is hard, I get it. But surely with how NPR is being treated on Twitter and their decision not to post there, there's some appetite among many public broadcasters for something like this, and pooling resources for it just makes sense. @gbhnews I wonder if it's comparable to hosting your own website? I know the traffic is harder on the servers, I especially for big sites with lots of engagement. @gbhnews There isn't enough engagement here partly because people refuse to leave birdsite, no matter how bad it gets. If many other news sites follow NPR's example and leave, many people will follow. There are other socials, but there is no promise that they won't go bad too. |
Gregory's Server
NOTE: as I mentioned to @FediFollows and @hermitary earlier today, it's important to understand the barriers that face stations or networks that want to set up a server. I summarize those here: https://mastodon.social/@gbhnews/110186548799130656
No one should expect anything to happen instantly (although who knows? on these here internets all kinds o' things happen).