{"id":237,"date":"2026-03-02T14:50:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T14:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/?p=237"},"modified":"2026-03-02T14:50:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T14:50:29","slug":"social-networks-where-are-they-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/2026\/03\/02\/social-networks-where-are-they-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Networks: Where are they now?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every once in a while, we hear of a new social network. Remember Google+? Friendster? ICQ? Apparently, it\u2019s very difficult to get one up and running, not so much because of the technical challenges, but because you need a large enough group of users who would be interested in talking to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Google+ came out (and pushed heavily by Google) there was much excitement, but the search volume for it told otherwise. People were not excited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, there\u2019s been a lot of talk of the demise of Twitter (X) on my social media feeds (including, ironically, on X). I have to admit that most of the academic content I used to have on X is gone, and now it\u2019s mostly news (broadly defined). However, is my feed correct? To test this, I compared the search volume (on Google Trends) of X and Reddit. As you can see in Figure 1, X is indeed going down, but Reddit has only recently caught on to it and is also going down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1: Google Trends search volume over time for X (Twitter) and Reddit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What about the places that people on my feed mention? Here\u2019s a few: As you can see, only Meta Threads is inching upwards. Bluesky, which had its heyday in November 2024 is quickly decaying, and Mastodon never really caught on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2: Google Trends search volume over time for Bluesky, Threads and Mastodon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I intentionally didn\u2019t show Bluesky and X on the same graph. On the month of peak Bluesky activity it\u2019s search volume was 14 times smaller than that of X and last month it was around 85 times smaller (!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also a clear geographic division among the social networks. First, here\u2019s Reddit and X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 3: Google Trends search volume for X in different countries.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Figure 4: Google Trends search volume for Reddit in different countries.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As one can see, X is popular in the south and east of the globe, while Reddit is firmly in USA, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the smaller social networks, the same happens. Bluesky is similar to Reddit, while Threads is more similar to X. I wonder if they are indeed replacements on a user-level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 5: Google Trends search volume for Bluesky in different countries.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Figure 6: Google Trends search volume for Threads in different countries.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My takeaway is, don\u2019t write the obituary for X (or Reddit) yet. Your echo chamber might be misleading\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while, we hear of a new social network. Remember Google+? Friendster? ICQ? Apparently, it\u2019s very difficult to get one up and running, not so much because of the technical challenges, but because you need a large enough group of users who would be interested in talking to each other. When Google+ … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Social Networks: Where are they now?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yom-tov.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}