After-Run Thoughts collected, edited, and ordered slighlty with ChatGPTChannels can be confusing.
I’am guilty. In my old days, I was known to be quite active across all the corporate channels in my old web2 home, enjoying the concept and the thematic reasons for posting under specific ones. However, there's always the risk of "channel explosion," or the danger of posting in one channel and missing the intended audience.
Platforms like Discord, Slack, Reddit, and now Farcater are heavily built around the use of channels, where we literally channel our posts and energy. Breathe in …Consider …Select …Channel your Post …Breathe out … *(if you reached the intended audience and got the desired reaction)*Sometimes, though, it's unclear to mewhere to post. Posting in one place might still at least show up on the home feeds of my followers, so there's a chance. (Wishful thinking)
Yet, with an increasing number of channels, "channel fatigue" becomes a real issue. Ultimately, one can only focus their energy on a single point. But here we are, navigating through myriad channels. I am already oversaturated in finding my community, there is a chance that my real community is just one / away.
So what else? Twitter introduced us to the #hashtag, which acts as an informal channel, allowing posts to be filtered through specific hashtags. It's a different kind of channel, more ephemeral?
As Farcater gains popularity, it initially seemed straightforward to post content, to post it to the feed. But when creating something like one of my mini interactive Zora mint, the decision of where to post becomes complicated. There's a nice vibe in the art channel, but it might also fit in the Zora or design channels.
Is it acceptable to post the same content multiple times, or does that risk annoying followers with redundancy and contributing to the noise, which is detrimental to a social feed's relevance? And beyond that, over time, each channel develops its own lingo and behavioral rules, which I most likely break, in trying to reach a broader audience at all.
Perhaps the future involves posting to multiple interconnected channels, rather than viewing channels as isolated branches. This brings to mind platforms like Are.na and tools like Roam Research, which utilize bi-directional links, creating a more browsable network. I guess our common driver is the goal is to reach people, but now it's about discovering how to do so effectively and it’s not that social timeline again. Wait wtf? Do we may even need to break our current spatial boundaries, and stop think in horizontals and verticals, but have to enter a realm of multi dimensional feeds?
This interaction design dilemma makes me wonder how to reach a broader audience without overwhelming them with repeated posts, avoiding the creation of numerous inactive communities along the way.
As channels proliferate, they also grow in size, leading to early signs of resentment within some due to deviations from established community norms. Moderation, in one form or another, will become necessary.
Ultimately, I'm curious about what exists between the concepts of channels and hashtags. Currently, there seems to be a void.
This realization came to me later, after a good shower, making me think that there is potentially a bit more to it. Those same dynamics and issues are also apparent in group chats, my notes, etc. So, I am wondering what this space of public/gated, notes (which for me are a form of self-talk), group chats, channels, and hashtags may imply.
