The Society, social media – and you!

The world of social media is changing, with more and more people either leaving or spending less time on Twitter (now rebranded as ‘X’ and with monthly charges for all users proposed). Meanwhile alternative platforms – including several new ones – are gaining in popularity. As a result, the community we engage with via social media is beginning to fragment, and overall engagement seems to be declining.

This presents both challenges and opportunities for the Society, and for our supporters on social media. (One of the challenges is writing a blog post or Destinations article which will not be out of date as soon as it is published!)

In adapting to an ever-evolving social media scene, we have set up accounts on more platforms and we are now active on:

X / Twitter

Facebook (also our Facebook Group)

Mastodon

Instagram

Pebble (no longer available)

Threads

Bluesky (currently invite only)

The links above – listed in descending order of how many followers we have at each site – will take you to our profile pages on the various platforms. (Please note however that currently, you need to have an account at Bluesky in order to view the website.)

We should also mention the amazing All About That Place Facebook Group, set up for the event of the same name which will celebrate our tenth anniversary (see our blog post Celebrating the Society for One-Place Studies’ 10th Anniversary). Do join that Group if you can, there are over a thousand members now and it will be a great place to watch the All About That Place talks and discuss them with fellow one-placers.

At this stage we can only speculate on how popular (or otherwise) these and other social media set-ups will become over the coming months. Many find Mastodon difficult to get to grips with, while others love that platform’s calmer atmosphere and the ability to create (and if need be, edit) longer posts. Pebble, Threads and Bluesky will all see improvements to their functionality, and we hope that Meta will make changes to Threads so that it can launch in EU countries. At some point Pebble and Bluesky will become available to all (in the meantime, we can help with invite codes for Bluesky and if you are not on X / Twitter, our member Daniel Loftus can do the same for genealogists seeking access to Pebble).

Whatever changes take place in the social media space, we aim to be ready. We can then engage with one-placers, and the wider the family/local history community, through those platforms where most members of that community are active.

Which social media platforms do you use? Are there any others we should be active on? Do let us know, and please also support us on those sites where you and we are present. Follow us, comment on and share our posts, and post your own one-place study content. On platforms supporting hashtags, be sure to use those which will help us and others find your posts. And take part in #OnePlaceWednesday, our midweek day-long social media ‘chat,’ now taking place on many more platforms besides X / Twitter. Any questions? Just ask!