POSSE is great from a content ownership perspective, and having syndication is better than having nothing in place.
That said, posting links to original content tends to get low engagement and is generally disliked on downstream social networks. It is often seen as not really participating in a native social network, instead spamming it for the sake of self-promotion. Even if the link is promising/worthwhile, the UX sucks. As it will be typically be consumed from mobile, it opens an in-app browser, your website loads, possibly with all kinds of distractions like cookie banners or a poor reading experience. Should your link contain yet other links, the experience pretty much breaks down.
Any feedback from downstream systems (likes, comments) are not syndicated back whilst at least for comments they can definitely enrich the content. Unless you have some very sophisticated polling mechanism, that content does not syndicate upwards. Similarly, if you reply to somebody else's content, your reply in a way is also your original content, but it's not preserved on your blog.
Should your link really have a high value, definitely don't expect that people pass down the link in distribution. They'll take quotes and make screenshots and post it natively.
Nitty gritty local cultures matter. On Reddit just posting the link may get you banned. On other networks you need to pay for API access. On Medium, you shouldn't post short form, on Mastodon, you might need a content warning and hashtags.
To handle the feedback of your syndication, you continue to need to deal with every local network personally. Manage their notifications, handle their replies and follow-ups. Your friends/followers are also not syndicated.
When using native social networks directly, people often use multiple personas. The standup professional on LinkedIn, but also the toxic gamer dude on Twitter. Same person, different masks. Or even multiple personas within the same network. Very hard to setup with POSSE.
Say you'd participate in a "#catphotooftheweek" competition that only is a thing on Twitter. You can post it on your blog but it makes no sense there. Syndication should only happen towards Twitter.
Anyway, like I said, better than nothing, but automated syndication often sucks. The content ownership part is the truly important part. You can most definitely consider syndicating manually, in optimal form per social network.
Syndicate usually doesn't mean just posting a link, it means actually posting all the content on other platforms. Cory Doctorow is a good example, every blog post is on his own site (pluralistic.net), but the full content is also posted on Twitter, Mastodon, Medium, and Tumblr. If you use one of those platforms you can read his stuff without ever visiting his site.
It does start with a link to his own page, but you can just skip that and keep reading if you want to. I think this is a great approach - if you just want to read the article you can click through, but if you really prefer a long thread you can read that instead, and then easily repost or respond to a particular quote from the thread.
It's true that you lose unified view/readership tracking, but I think that's considered a positive for a lot of people.
I think a part of the POSSE idea is precisely that, yes, in the moment you have those disadvantages. It wouldn't be its own idea if there wasn't some sort of tradeoff involved.
However... while my website may not be the hopping, happening thing, it was there when weblogs were the thing, it's been there through Slashdot, it's been there through StumbleOn going up and down, it's been there through MySpace, it's been there through Reddit, it's been there through Facebook, it's been there through Hacker News, it's been there through Mastodon, and it'll be there through the next happening thing, and based on statistics, quite likely outlast it too.
My policy is even a bit more flexible than that. I use social media to tune things, then make them permanent on my website. Often what ends up on my website is just not possible to post on social media, between the formatting I need, the size of the post, and so on.
To me, you're talking about all these short-term disadvantages, but I'm thinking long term, where I'm planning on outlasting all these transient social media services.
(And yeah, I don't get traffic, but to be honest, sometimes just publishing something and getting it out there, without hundreds of anklebiters rushing out to bitch about it, is the way to go.)
> That said, posting links to original content tends to get low engagement and is generally disliked on downstream social networks. It is often seen as not really participating in a native social network
A long time ago, when I used Twitter, I used to think like this, but now I see it for what it is: cult mentality. And I have no qualms about offending cultists.
Leaving off the loaded language, I'll call them potential readers.
You may have no qualms offending potential readers, but if so you probably aren't the target audience here. Many people in fact try and appeal to potential readers to encourage them to read their work.
> Any feedback from downstream systems (likes, comments) are not syndicated back whilst at least for comments they can definitely enrich the content. Unless you have some very sophisticated polling mechanism, that content does not syndicate upwards.
The modal indieweb approach is sophisticated internally, but pretty plug-and-play:
brid.gy/
> When using native social networks directly, people often use multiple personas. The standup professional on LinkedIn, but also the toxic gamer dude on Twitter. Same person, different masks. Or even multiple personas within the same network. Very hard to setup with POSSE.
IMO yes/no; "have >1 domain" or two neocities sites or whatever is decently doable for fully separated alt-style stuff. If you want to syndicate from the same source only your toxic gamer stuff to Twitter and your professional stuff to LinkedIn, that... well, that example used to be possible before they killed the Twitter API. I think the technical part here is less difficult than feeling out your own social intent, what you actually want to share in different spaces, rather than letting the product design and app network effects cue you. But maybe anyone this involved in the web should be thinking about it that hard, maybe it'd be better for us to be more reflective, less cued.
A lot of this is down to deliberate API limitations of social networks, that are implemented to make them more walled gardens. For instance being able to reverse syndicate comments and likes from FB to your blog should be trivial, but AFAIK not allowed in the FB API.
> That said, posting links to original content tends to get low engagement and is generally disliked on downstream social networks.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but do people on, say, reddit or hacker news general dislike it when people post links to original content on other sites?
On Reddit at least, posting links to your own site or your own content on third party sites tends to be seen as "self promotion" and at least a little bit icky, even if you don't financially benefit. Some subreddit communities will tolerate it if you are an active participant in other threads on the sub; others dislike it even then.
That said, posting links to original content tends to get low engagement and is generally disliked on downstream social networks. It is often seen as not really participating in a native social network, instead spamming it for the sake of self-promotion. Even if the link is promising/worthwhile, the UX sucks. As it will be typically be consumed from mobile, it opens an in-app browser, your website loads, possibly with all kinds of distractions like cookie banners or a poor reading experience. Should your link contain yet other links, the experience pretty much breaks down.
Any feedback from downstream systems (likes, comments) are not syndicated back whilst at least for comments they can definitely enrich the content. Unless you have some very sophisticated polling mechanism, that content does not syndicate upwards. Similarly, if you reply to somebody else's content, your reply in a way is also your original content, but it's not preserved on your blog.
Should your link really have a high value, definitely don't expect that people pass down the link in distribution. They'll take quotes and make screenshots and post it natively.
Nitty gritty local cultures matter. On Reddit just posting the link may get you banned. On other networks you need to pay for API access. On Medium, you shouldn't post short form, on Mastodon, you might need a content warning and hashtags.
To handle the feedback of your syndication, you continue to need to deal with every local network personally. Manage their notifications, handle their replies and follow-ups. Your friends/followers are also not syndicated.
When using native social networks directly, people often use multiple personas. The standup professional on LinkedIn, but also the toxic gamer dude on Twitter. Same person, different masks. Or even multiple personas within the same network. Very hard to setup with POSSE.
Say you'd participate in a "#catphotooftheweek" competition that only is a thing on Twitter. You can post it on your blog but it makes no sense there. Syndication should only happen towards Twitter.
Anyway, like I said, better than nothing, but automated syndication often sucks. The content ownership part is the truly important part. You can most definitely consider syndicating manually, in optimal form per social network.