The Hunt for a Twitter Replacement

 The recent acquirement of Twitter by Elon Musk has set off a chain of chaos and uncertainty for the platform, leaving many scrambling for ways to maintain their industry connections and bases online without it. In the past few years, Twitter has become a center for communities in publishing, comics, and other creative fields. It’s been a place for writers and artists to get their work in front of editors and agents outside of conventions, for collaborators to meet, and for creators to share their art. It’s also been home to numerous pitching events, many of which specifically aim to spotlight diverse creators and bring diverse voices into publishing, such as #DVPit, PitMad, #LatinxPitch, and APIpit. The uncertainty in the past few weeks has threatened all of that work and community.

To be clear, it’s unlikely that Twitter is going anywhere in the very near future. Sites like MySpace are still around, despite no longer being the dominant online space, and it’s likely that even if Twitter falls off it’ll continue to persist in some fashion for a while yet. Hopefully that helps relieve some related anxiety!

That said, creators have been looking for alternatives to reconnect and establish bases in the event of a Twitter shutdown. Discord has been used by many long before this to host and join communities. You can join and create private servers with invites from friends, or you can look for and join public servers. You can find some semi-public servers as well, as some professionals in comics and art have created servers to host industry chatter. Some pitching events such as APIpit already have their own discord servers. It doesn’t have the discoverability of Twitter or the equivalent of events, but it can be a good way to keep up with industry friends and share resources.

Tumblr has also seen a resurgence in the uncertainty surrounding Twitter. Tumblr downloads were up as high as 60% last week. Tumblr benefits from being a preexisting website and large social media platform, as well as having a robust tagging system, but it’s historically been a predominantly fandom driven site. There have been writers and artists that have gotten their starts and been discovered on Tumblr in its hey-day, but it remains to be seen if the industry will follow users back as well. 

Two recent contenders that have proposed as Twitter alternatives have been Mastodon and Hive Social. Mastodon is a network of serves that is meant to look and function similar to Twitter. It’s seen hundreds of thousands of users sign up in the last few weeks, but its decentralized format has led to some confusion (users sign up for a single server, but then can interact with other users through Mastodon). There are frequently boosted posts to explain how the app works. 

Hive Social is another app that’s been around since 2019, but has also seen an incredible boost the last few weeks, reaching a million users a few days ago. It’s formatted similarly to Twitter and appears relatively intuitive, but it currently doesn’t have a web app, and has experienced some crashes with its sudden influx of users. 

Only time will tell how Twitter will fare in these coming months, and if any of the proposed alternatives will be able to keep up the momentum and become a social media staple. What is sure, however, is that the publishing industry and community isn’t going anywhere fast.

 

Cindy Harris (she/they) is a Mexican American comics artist and illustrator that works in the publishing industry. She has worked as a letterer, editor, illustrator, and writer, and loves stories about identity, relationships, and growth.

www.cyngharris.com

Some Excellent Advice for Kid Lit Writers and Illustrators On Where To Draw The Private/Public Line On Facebook, Twitter and in all Social Media

Jennifer Laughran, an Agent at Andrea Brown Literary, has a fantastic blog post at her "Jennifer Represents..." blog that you need to read: The Fine Art of Zipping it, or XYZ PDQ.  It's about what you should and probably shouldn't share in our new facebook/twitter/online world of social media.   Go read it and pop back so we can chat about it.

I'll wait.


Okay, now that you're back, let's do some self-examination.  Jennifer writes,

"...the tone of my social media reflects the tone of my work."

What's the tone of your facebook posts?  Your tweets?  Your blog?

What about the photos you post on facebook and your profile pictures across social media?  If a picture is worth 1,000 words, what does your profile pic say?

When I get a friend request from someone I don't know, if they're not wearing a shirt in their profile pic (guys or girls), I do not friend them back or accept the request.  No offense meant, but clearly, they're not there for the same reasons I am.

(An extension of this is that in places where you can, send a message with your friending request, explaining the connection, and showing your professional intent.  It's certainly something I appreciate.)

I'm online to be my public, professional self.  To have and contribute to great discussions about kid lit and diversity and ending bullying and GLBTQ equality ...and to gather with like-minded tribe members - writers, illustrators, agents, editors, publishers, art directors, librarians, teachers, parents and teens.

Why are you online?  Who's your audience?

As Jennifer writes with her inimitable wit,

...if you have a public account on which you are promoting your work for children, and you are friending/following readers, teachers, librarians and publishing professionals, use your dang noodle. And not THAT noodle, mister.

Think about it in terms of what Alexandra Penfold, Editor at Paula Wiseman Books at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, suggested in her panel at #NY12SCBWI:

"Google yourself and make sure it's what you want agents and editors to see with your submission."

Wise words.

Illustrate and Write On,
Lee

In the News This Week

Fridays on the SCBWI blog, I share snippets of and links to some of the publishing/media-related news I've read during the last week that I found interesting, helpful, and/or fun. Click titles to get to the full articles.

Among this week's news: Sterling's new YA imprint, social networks and marketing, Scholastic's own social network, the MySpace redesign, B&N's Nook plus color, kindergartners in a bookstore, a book seller in an elementary school, rearranging YA in B&N, raising boys who read, a PW interview with SCBWI board member Linda Sue Park, and more.


Sterling Publishing’s Splinter Imprint Opens with Colleen Houck Fantasy Series (GalleyCat)
Splinter, Sterling Publishing’s young-adult imprint, will launch with a three-part fantasy series by Colleen Houck. Breaking the tradition of publishing one book per year, the Tiger Saga will be available in its entirety by the end of 2011. Splinter will release Tiger’s Curse on January 11th, Tiger’s Quest on June 11th, and Tiger’s Voyage on November 11th. The books will be published in both hardcover and eBook formats.

B&N Divides Out Teen Fiction Genres (PW)

In a sign of just how popular teen fiction has become, Barnes & Noble is in the midst of rearranging its teen fiction section chain-wide this week in an effort to improve the shopping experience and boost sales. Already teen fiction is the biggest book growth category at Barnes & Noble, according to Mary Amicucci, v-p of children’s books. In terms of volume, it is the second largest subject, behind adult fiction.

It's All About the Social Network (PW)
Nearly 80 publishing professionals tuned in to a BISG-sponsored webcast, “Marketing ‘Books’ in a Digital World,” on Wednesday. The hour-long discussion covered a range of tactics publishers are taking to get their books into readers’ hands, but the topic that loomed largest was social networking.

Scholastic Launches Social Networking Site (PW)
Scholastic is releasing a new social networking site today, YouAreWhatYouRead.com, that lets people build a profile based on the five books that were most influential in their lives. Like GoodReads and other social networking sites for readers, users can find other people with shared literary interests, or “Bookprints,” as Scholastic calls them. Scholastic books don’t appear to get special billing on YouAreWhatYouRead.com, and nearly every book in print from any publisher is available for users to catalog on their profiles. There is a strong celebrity angle to the site, with visible profiles for more than 130 well-known personalities ranging from Bill Gates to Whoopi Goldberg.

B&N Intros Nookcolor Tablet, New Children's Titles (PW)
Approximately one year after introducing its first e-reading device, Barnes & Noble took a major step forward Tuesday with the introduction of the Nookcolor, a $249 tablet with a seven inch VividView Color Touchscreen. The addition of color to the e-reading device allowed B&N to officially announce Nook Kids, which in addition to 12,000 chapter books, will have 130 picture books at launch with that number expected to double by the end of the year. Some of the children’s books will be enhanced e-books, featuring video and audio. A third part of the launch was the announcement of Nookdeveloper that will allow creators to develop “reading-centric” apps that will be sold through the Nook app store. Since the Nook runs on the Android platform, apps from the Android Market can be ported to the Nook, but Android Market apps will not automatically be sold through the Nook since B&N want to curate the store, company CEO William Lynch said.

Amazon to Introduce Lending for Kindle (GalleyCat)
In keeping with a tradition of quietly releasing news on Fridays, Amazon revealed last week they will soon allow readers to loan Kindle books to other users–one crucial feature that many readers have sought.

How to Raise Boys Who Read (WSJ)
When I was a young boy, America's elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can't read. According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents. The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.

Kindergartners and Commerce (Shelf Talker)
Every year the Shelburne Community School kindergartners come to the bookstore. They walk over, hand in hand, from the school down the road. They pile into the store, one class at a time and settle in the picture book section on our comfy rug. It’s a cozy tradition.

Corrupting the Youth (Genreville)
My alumni association loves me; every time they ask me whether I want to give a talk, I say yes. Today I went back to my elementary school to teach seven-year-olds about book reviewing. If you’ve ever wanted to get back to basics in your work or personal life, try explaining what you do to a very smart seven-year-old. I knew I was going to be facing a tough audience: perceptive but easily bored. Fortunately, I also knew that they were all interested in books and reading–and in having and sharing opinions.

9 Super Annoying Twitter Personality Type (Social Times)
I dip in and out of Twitter, and lately it’s been obvious to me that I’m looking at the same personality types no matter where I go. Here are 9 – Which one are you?

Survey Finds College Students Love Laptops But Not eReaders, Facebook But Not Twitter (ReadWriteWeb)
Want to know what the future workforce thinks of technology, how it uses search engines, social networking, and online collaborative tools? The recently released ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology gives some excellent insights into trends in college students' technology ownership, perceptions, skills, and habits. The 2010 report was recently released by EDUCAUSE, a non-profit organization that supports the advancement of technology in higher education. The report is based on a survey from the spring of 2010 of over 36,950 freshmen and seniors at 100 four-year institutions and students at 27 two-year institutions.

iPads Hit AT&T And Verizon Store (eBook Newer)
Apple’s iPad goes on sales today at AT&T Wireless and Verizon stores. The tablet is popping up in various retailers this holiday season, as Apple hopes to push the iPad as this year’s holiday gift. The iPad is already available in Target, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.

MySpace Unveils Major Redesign (MediaWeek)
MySpace on Wednesday (Oct. 27) will unveil a striking redesign that represents a culmination of the News Corp.-owned social network's attempt at reinventing itself as an entertainment hub. According to president Mike Jones, MySpace had long suffered from what he calls "design debt"—i.e. an accumulation of different looks and incompatible functionalities. For example, there had been 117 different styles for the MySpace logo alone. Therefore, rather than undertake a simple redesign, Jones and his team elected to completely rebuild the site "from the ground up," he said. "This is something we can now build upon."

Q & A with Linda Sue Park (PW)
Linda Sue Park is the Newbery-Award winning author of A Single Shard and other acclaimed novels and picture books. Her forthcoming book, The Long Walk to Water, profiles two young people in the Sudan—one based on a real Lost Boy, who was forced to flee his village, the other a fictional girl who collects the water for her village.

In the News This Week

Fridays on the SCBWI blog, I share snippets of and links to some of the publishing/media-related news I've read during the last week that I found interesting, helpful, and/or fun. Click titles to get to the full articles.

I donned my silver lamé jumpsuit as I compiled this week's brave new world of publishing news. Among the stories: MOCKINGJAY sales soaring, Borders sales slumping; Borders' and Sony's new e-readers coming soon, PW to review self-published and POD books (for a price), a new dictionary app from Macmillan, a new social network from Apple (and why it won't trump Facebook), why bloggers should be on Facebook, tweens who blog, and Lane Smith on his new book which pokes fun at the wired world. (That doesn't mean there's not a trailer--it's included below for your amusement.) 


Mockingjay' Sells More Than 450,000 Copies in First Week (PW)

Mockingjay, the final book in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, sold more than 450,000 copies (hardcover and e-book) in its first week on sale in the U.S., its publisher, Scholastic, announced today. The book debuted at number one on both the USA Today and New York Times bestseller lists. Scholastic has gone back to press for an additional 400,000 copies, bringing the total number of copies in print for Mockingjay in the U.S. to 1.6 million since its August 24 publication.

The New PW Select: A Quarterly Service for the Self-Published (PW)

We are returning to our earliest roots. PW dates to 1872, when it was first known as Trade Circular Weekly and listed all titles published that week in what was then a nascent industry. We have decided to embrace the self-publishing phenomenon in a similar spirit. Call it what you will—self-publishing, DIY, POD, author-financed, relationship publishing, or vanity fare. They are books and that is what PW cares about. And we aim to inform the trade.

Macmillan Dictionary Launches Apps (eBook Newser)
Macmillan Dictionaries has teamed up with software company DW Education to launch a suite of iPhone and iPad apps based on their dictionaries. The apps are interactive and users can create personalized word lists. Users can also distinguish between British and American English. The Macmillan website explains: "These tools will give you immediate access to definitions, phonetics, pronunciation and synonyms, plus the unique Macmillan English Dictionary red-star system indicating frequency of word usage for the most common words in English.

Apple's Ping, MySpace & The Future of Music Social Networks (Ypulse)
The big news out of Apple today is the debut of music social network Ping. Packaged with the latest version of iTunes, the opt-in newsfeed detailing friends' listening and buying habits already has tech pundits speculating about game changing and MySpace killing potential. So.. should we buy into the hype?

10 Reasons Apple Ping Won’t Beat Facebook Anytime Soon (All Facebook)
Yesterday Apple announced Ping, a network which many have suggested will replace MySpace and present a new competitor to Facebook. However Apple’s first shot at building a social network has many flaws. As such, there are many areas that the company needs to improve before it can be considered a legitimate competitor to Facebook. With a physical platform of distribution however, if Apple can fix the product’s flaws, there’s no doubt they could rise to become the most legitimate Facebook competitor.

Scholastic Books Revamps Its Marketing (NY Times)
WHEN Karen Rice was a little girl, Santa Claus visited multiple times a year. At least it felt that way when Ms. Rice, now a 22-year-old elementary-school teacher in Elizabethtown, Ky., got the books she ordered from the Scholastic Book Club. The Scholastic Book Club says its Facebook page will help teachers, students and parents talk about class and reading. "I can remember as a kid, it’s kind of like a little Christmas when your books come in," she said. In a tradition carried out in classrooms countless times during the club’s 60 years, Ms. Rice got a catalog and order forms from her teacher and then went home, selected a few books and returned the forms and money to her teacher. A few weeks later, a box full of books arrived for distribution. 

The internet comes of age: Meet the tweeny bloggers (Independent)
They are the Generation Net, whose toddler years have spawned countless mummy blogs, whether they liked it or not. Now, they're getting their own back. Children as young as three are turning to blogging to tell their side of the story. The growing army of child bloggers is tackling subjects from politics to new toys, while improving their literacy skills. The interest has triggered a debate on the wisdom of giving children free rein online, as social networking sites aimed at pre-teens soar in popularity.

Another Weak Quarter from Borders; Expands Non-book Offerings (PW) 

Borders Group reported another disappointing quarter this morning with sales in the period ended July 31 falling 11.5%, to $526.1 million and the loss from continuing operations increasing to $51.6 million from $45.1 million in the comparable quarter in 2009. Same store sales fell 6.8%. Looking for a bright spot, Borders said sales through Borders.com increased 56.2% to $15.5 million.

Borders eReaders Go On Sale (GalleyCat)
After some early rumors, Borders has put the Kobo eReader and the Libre eBook Reader Pro on sale.
The Kobo is now priced at $129.99, down from $149.99. The Libre eBook Reader is now $99.99, down from $119.99. The Libre eReader will be on sale through September 14th.

Sony Refreshes Reader Family With New Screens And Bodies (CrunchGear)
As expected, the new lineup of Sony Readers has arrived with the rumored touch capability, though there’s none of the 3G we heard about. Query: why is every company releasing things so late tonight? It’s a good thing I have no life! The familiar three “editions” of the e-reader family are still around, but they’ve been improved with the new Pearl e-ink display for improved contrast and speed, and Sony says it’s improved the touch-sensitive layer as well.

Staples To Sell Kindles (eBookNewser
Staples is going to start selling Amazon's Kindle this fall. The office supply retailer will carry the new Kindle, the Kindle DX and the Kindle 3G. Staples will also carry Kindle accessories.

Facebook is Not Your Blog (blogworld)
Last week, one of the most-clicked stories from SmartBrief on Social Media was an article from Advertising Age: What Happens When Facebook Trumps Your Brand Site? It’s a legitimate concern for businesses. With millions of people using Facebook and that number growing every day, brands like Coca-Cola, Victoria’s Secret, and Oreo are getting more Facebook traffic than they are getting traffic to their home websites. According to reports, there are nearly 40 fan pages with at least a million Facebook fans, or “likes” as they’re calling ‘em these days, whatever. The point is that Facebook might not be around forever, but right now, they are securing controlling the social networking market.

‘It’s a Book’ Author Lane Smith on Kids and Technology (WSJ)
As demonstrated by books like "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" and "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales," his collaborations with Jon Scieszka, author and illustrator Lane Smith has a wonderfully sardonic sense of humor that lends itself well to subversive children’s books. In his latest title, "It’s A Book," Lane turns his humor to a pervasive cultural issue among the younger generation today: explaining the merits of a printed book--a property that can’t text or tweet. He explores the issues through two main characters: A monkey who’s trying to read, and a jackass who keeps interrupting him with questions and manages to condense to a page of "Treasure Island" into a Twitter-post length message, complete with emoticon.