YouTube video

What is Bluesky? Everything to Know About This X Competitor In 2025

Discover the latest social media platforms of 2025. Learn about their features and benefits and how to leverage them for your membership website.

Discover the future of social media in our latest show, “Everything You Need to Know About The New Social Media Platforms in 2025.” We delve into emerging platforms, innovative features, and digital interaction trends. From AI-driven content curation to privacy-focused networks, this comprehensive guide equips you with the knowledge to navigate the evolving landscape. Don’t miss out—watch now and stay ahead of the curve.

The Hosts of The Show, Jonathan Denwood & Nicole Ouellette

Bluesky

https://bsky.app

Mastodon

https://joinmastodon.org

Pixelfed

https://pixelfed.org/

TikTok

https://www.tiktok.com/en/

Instagram Threads

https://www.threads.net/?hl=en

Skylight

https://www.skylightframe.com/

Atproto

https://atproto.com

This Week Show’s Sponsors

LifterLMS: LifterLMS

Convesio: Convesio

Omnisend: Omnisend

The Show’s Main Transcript

[00:00:00.690] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 107. In this episode, it’s just Nico and me. We will discuss some new social media platforms that emerged in 2024 and at the beginning of 2025. I can’t believe that we’re at the end of January. It’s just flown, flown by. Flown. Flown. And I’ve got my very great co-host, Nico. Nico, would you like to introduce yourself to the Oh, yeah, sure.

[00:01:00.050] – Nicole Ouellette

It’s just moments since we’ve… I appreciate that there are always new things to talk about on this show. So my name is Nicole Willet, and I own a marketing company. I also have two co-working spaces, and I’m generally just interested in internet stuff. So, Yeah, that’s a little bit about me.

[00:01:16.640] – Jonathan Denwood

Where’s the cats, Nicole?

[00:01:18.880] – Nicole Ouellette

Pardon?

[00:01:19.500] – Jonathan Denwood

Where are the cats?

[00:01:20.810] – Nicole Ouellette

We never know where the cats are. At some point, they may jump onto my desk. One of them likes the bright lights I turn on when recording. So I’m sure one of them will be lured here momentarily.

 

[00:01:32.940] – Jonathan Denwood

Yes, we’ve got many co-hosts; some are human, and some are furry. In this show, we’re going to, like I say, be talking about some of the leading new types of social media platforms that will help you, hopefully, market your membership community website. But before we go into the meat and potatoes for this show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out got a fabulous free resource, a list of all the best WordPress plugins and services that could help you build a membership website, a community-focused website in 2025. Plus, we got some special offers from the sponsors. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals. What more could you ask for, my beloved tribe?

[00:02:42.670] – Nicole Ouellette

I love WordPress, I love free stuff. Sounds great.

[00:02:46.820] – Jonathan Denwood

You should go get it. It’s delicious, isn’t it? I love to say that word, delicious. But there we go. So let’s go straight into it, and Nicole’s the expert. Let’s start with I suppose one of the biggest stars that developed in 2024 and has progressed at the beginning of this year, and that’s Blue Sky. So what are some of the things that you think people need to understand about Blue Sky?

 

[00:03:18.740] – Nicole Ouellette

Well, I think that there’s just been a fundamental shift. It started a couple of years ago. Do you guys remember, and we’re going to talk about mastodon later, but you probably have mastodon approximately maybe a a year or a year and a half ago. And the thing is, and you probably noticed if you’ve been using social media to promote your membership website, that increasingly it’s difficult to be seen on these platforms, and the algorithms determine whether your stuff is seen or not, even whether your own followers see your stuff or not. And so all these companies, whether it’s Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, all these traditional social media companies are centralized social networks. So their I’m going to go by a company, and then let’s say I’m following Jonathan on Instagram, right? What happens is I follow Jonathan on Instagram, and then Instagram could decide to not show me Jonathan’s content. Instagram could decide that I’m a terrible person and ban me from the platform. Instagram could randomly just shut off Jonathan’s account, as what’s happened to a lot of people. They just find that they like, oh, I can’t get into my account and I can’t get support to get back into my account.

 

[00:04:32.950] – Nicole Ouellette

So the problem when one company owns stuff is they set the rules. It’s like we’re renting space on their platforms, right? So there’s been a movement, in particular in this post TikTok ban, and other things happening across, Reddit’s now banning links from X, or a lot of Reddit communities, I should say, because of certain things that have happened in the last couple of weeks. So people are like, well, it’d be really it’s very nice if I could post content, and it wasn’t on a company’s server. It was something that I had more control over. So there’s this increasing movement toward decentralized social media platforms. So these platforms aren’t really owned by a particular company in the same way that Elon Musk owns X or… So In some ways, you get a lot of control as the creator on these platforms in terms of putting out content. And as somebody who follows people, I can also regulate what content I see. And so, like I said, these decentralized platforms should not only not bar you from them for no reason or whatever, but also you just have a lot of control as a creator of what you see, and then the distribution of your content in general.

 

[00:06:03.430] – Nicole Ouellette

So so yeah, so Blue Sky is the one that everyone’s talking about right now, especially post TikTok band. I would say this is the big one. And what’s cool about it is, if we’re using Twitter in 2010, you might log in and say, oh, this feels familiar. It was those nice parts of Twitter. I can follow certain hashtags. I can see a lot of the content. There’s not my feed isn’t being filtered. There’s no ads on it just yet. And another thing I really like about it is in the settings, I can control what content I see. What I’ve gone on Instagram the last few times Let’s just say I’ve seen a lot more of some people than I really wanted to see. And on Blue Sky, I can actually control like, oh, I don’t want to see, not only I don’t want to see any nudity, but I don’t want to see certain content that is hashtagged a certain way or that has certain themes in it. I don’t want to see dieting content, for example. And when I go on Instagram as a woman of a certain age, I’m getting a lot of poop tea content and things like that, like weight loss and whatever.

 

[00:07:15.760] – Nicole Ouellette

And I could just ban certain words and not see any content like that, which I think is really neat. So anyway, so Blue Sky is, you sign up for it like any other social media platform. You have a handle and you have a profile and you have people and you can follow content. And that’s how it generally works. But I think we’re just going to see more. We’re going to talk about more of the decentralized platforms a little later in the show, but I think there’s just a movement toward them for a variety of reasons. Are you on Blue Sky?

 

[00:07:43.300] – Jonathan Denwood

No, I’ve been thinking about it because I do like some of the features. Obviously, I wouldn’t say I’ve got concerns, but I think the CEO and founder, Jay Gabba. It’s a privately held company. Obviously, I think that one of the founders of Twitter actually invested in it. I think it is a private company. I think the technology that it’s built on is open technology to some degree, the protocol. It’s more open then, but it’s not a true open source community. But these terms are very interchangeable because a lot of people thought WordPress was a true open source project. I knew as I got a little bit more involved through my other podcast in the WordPress world, It became obvious to me that it wasn’t. That happened about six, seven years ago, but the realities of WordPress have become much more clearer in 2024 that it isn’t really true. The actual technology is open source, but the ethos of WordPress isn’t really matching up with the public image. That could happen with Blue Sky. That’s why I’ve mentioned this, because the same consequence could happen. You’ve got to understand what you’re involved. But Features, I think you were totally spot on.

 

[00:09:50.480] – Jonathan Denwood

I’ve played with it a little bit very casually, is that you really have that sense Twitter about 10 years ago. That would sound bad because we’re talking about, but it isn’t actually. It’s a compliment, in my opinion, because I don’t want to get you into politics, really, but it’s more the user experience. I actually think it’s declined on Twitter because not everything, I think some Some of the features, I think, have improved, but I do think some areas it’s definitely declined. Let’s go on to something else. Let’s go on.

 

[00:10:41.890] – Nicole Ouellette

Oh, yeah. I just have one quick thing to just build on what you said. And I think Blue Skye started off as an open source thing, and when Jack Dorsey, which is one of the cofounders of Twitter, was investing in, like you were saying. And then I think he exited the project, I think in large part because it’s a a private company thing now. And it’s really hard because we understand that a lot of the internet’s great infrastructure has been built off of volunteers, and off of people who know a lot about tech, who are volunteering their time, who are volunteering server space, and volunteering moderation, and things like that. It’s this really tough balance because you understand that you want to create an environment that is and democratically run, for lack of a better word. But also you understand that there needs to be some structure that can pay certain people to get things done in a faster way.

 

[00:11:42.100] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s finding that balance.

 

[00:11:43.850] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah, it’s finding that Exactly. It’s finding platforms that align with the balance that you think that they should have.

 

[00:11:50.220] – Jonathan Denwood

One thing that we… Before we go on to the next, one thing that I think we got to stress is one of the reasons if you got a membership or and you’re trying to build, publicize your membership website and get the will moving. One of the great things of Blue sky is unlike X or Twitter, I’m going to keep calling it Twitter, and some of the other social, the more established social media platforms, if you share links to content, you’re not going to be penalized. That’s one of the biggest reasons to look at Blue Sky. I think it’s got to a volume, and I might… Also, there are some third-party programs that are quite effective, and they allow you… So You can export who you are following and who are following you from Twitter. There’s some third-party apps that allow you to transfer that data and then to contact the people that are on Blue Skye so you can get up and started quite quickly without having to do that manually. My understanding is one of the leading of these tools is based in France. I forgot its name. It’s supposed to work quite effectively.

 

[00:13:19.500] – Jonathan Denwood

It makes it just a bit easier from moving or running both parallel, which I might do. But the great thing of Blue sky is that you can share links in the social media you’re putting on it, and you can drive traffic to your website. And because you got a link, you’re not going to be peeing are opinionised in the same way that you are penalized on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. That’s a problem. That’s been an increasing problem because they don’t I want you to share stuff that drives people off their platform, which is natural. But the other thing is that’s why a lot of people post on those platforms because they want to share content as a verb on their website, because it was a main tactic for driving website, driving awareness to your membership offering. So that’s the important thing, isn’t it, Nicole?

 

[00:14:25.020] – Nicole Ouellette

Absolutely. And then you have to understand that there are circle and that are leaving platforms, and they’re leaving Twitter. I’m going to keep calling it Twitter, too. They’re leaving those platforms. And if you want to reach them, thinking about being on some of these more emerging platforms might be a way for you to continue to reach them to to talk about your membership platform and grow it.

 

[00:14:49.470] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I think I’m correct, Princris is the same. They don’t penalize, if I pronounce it incorrectly.

 

[00:14:57.810] – Nicole Ouellette

No, the cat just jumped on the desk, I’m sorry.

 

[00:15:00.180] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. I think I am correct about their platform. You can share links, and you’re not going to get penalized either, are you?

 

[00:15:08.930] – Nicole Ouellette

No, I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s… I mean, they’re not serving ads, right? So The reason they’re penalizing the links is they want to keep you on the platform, and they want to keep you on the platform so they can show you ads.

 

[00:15:20.780] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I think, Chris, you do add advertising, don’t you?

 

[00:15:24.230] – Nicole Ouellette

Oh, yeah, Pinterest. Yeah.

 

[00:15:26.000] – Jonathan Denwood

But I think Blue Sky is going to introduce advertising platform.

 

[00:15:30.060] – Nicole Ouellette

At some point, because how are they going to sustain themselves? How are they going to make money?

 

[00:15:35.310] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, there’s only two way. It’s either subscription or it’s advertising in it, and I think it’s going to be advertised. They probably also might introduce some form of subscription, which is what X has done, really, in a way, isn’t it? And I’ve given him some of my money just because I wanted to upload video to my Twitter account. That’s the main reason.

 

[00:16:06.280] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah.

 

[00:16:07.250] – Jonathan Denwood

Right, let’s go on to Masjid. A funny name, really. Was that the… That comes from Greek, isn’t it? That was the half man, half bull, wasn’t it? Oh, is it? Was that the Masjid?

 

[00:16:24.210] – Nicole Ouellette

I thought it was almost like a big prehistory, the historic elephant with the… No, you know what? That’s a mammoth. I don’t know what I’m thinking.

 

[00:16:35.400] – Jonathan Denwood

I might be totally wrong here, folks, but it’s Jason- I just love how all these companies, it’s always an animal, right?

 

[00:16:41.880] – Nicole Ouellette

So this guy’s a little butterfly. This one has a little elephant.

 

[00:16:46.490] – Jonathan Denwood

I might be totally wrong there, then.

 

[00:16:49.150] – Nicole Ouellette

No, I’m not a good Greek. I’m not a good mythology person, so I would have 100 % charged. I’m not.

 

[00:16:54.670] – Jonathan Denwood

I think I probably got this totally wrong and made a fool of myself, but I don’t care. So a bit more open source in a way. And you got, in general, I haven’t played with this either, but what people said to me, it’s a little bit more difficult to set up and that. But what’s your feedback about this?

 

[00:17:20.670] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah, I mean, I think right now it’s mainly run by a very small team and donations.

 

[00:17:28.780] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s what I understand about it. I think they’re based in Germany, actually. I’m not sure.

 

[00:17:33.820] – Nicole Ouellette

Oh, okay. That makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people when Twitter first started doing its silliness, a lot of people moved over to a mastodon because as a, well, I’m going to take my ball and go somewhere else sending a message to Twitter. And then I think a lot of people, myself included, I made a profile, I posted a few times, and then I proceeded to not really do much on it. But I think that it is definitely more decentralized than Blue Sky for sure. And it’s similar in terms of all social media sites, when you look at them, they’re the same. There’s the feed of content, and then you have your personal profile, and then you can find and follow other people or other topics. So it is very… When you log in, you’re going to see that it’s quite similar. And unlike these, I’m forgetting, so there’s centralized, there’s decentralized, and then there’s a third one, where you don’t even have a username and password at all. You have a public and a private key, that allows you to get on different servers. So that is, I think, part of why this hasn’t really taken off, is it’s such a shift, thinking about using these websites.

 

[00:18:54.630] – Nicole Ouellette

It’s not like, oh, we’re putting in an email address, we’re picking a handle and a password, in quite the same way. So I think there’s a little bit of a technological hurdle, especially when we talk about servers and things like that. So there’s the mastodon server, and then when you go to the site, you’ll see there’s join another server because there’s other servers, because there isn’t one central place.

 

[00:19:17.390] – Jonathan Denwood

I think the other thing, I think you’re totally correct. I think the other thing is I can still use Twitter because I never use Twitter the traditional way anyway. I’ve never used Twitter to comment a lot a lot about people’s position on this and that. I’ve used lists. I’ve gone in, got a Pacific list about WordPress, a Pacific list on tech, Pacific list on a couple other subjects, and I screen different groups of people based on these lists in Twitter. Occasionally, I go into the general feed where I’ve got everybody because you see people and you see some stuff that wouldn’t be screened in your lists in Twitter. But it is a bit of a dust bin. But I’ve never gone in, and you could say that reduces the effectiveness of it because I’m not really… I’m not engaging in a lot of conflict. I do comment on people and I do like their posts, and I do try and support people that’s producing good content, and I do comment, but I don’t engage in continuous discussion on Twitter. I’ve never have because I just don’t think you can get much sense out of these type of platforms.

 

[00:20:50.770] – Jonathan Denwood

I think it encourages the worst type of response from people. I think that’s part of their business model is doing encourage worse type of response on people. I think it’s to reduce the effectiveness, but through my podcasts, and especially my other podcast, which… And This one has grown quite rapidly, which has been quite nice to see. It depends on how you’re going to use these social media platforms, but I think in general, I think those that have benefited the most from what’s happened on Twitter has been Blue Sky. In another strange way, I think LinkedIn have benefited from it as well. We haven’t got LinkedIn on their list because it’s been around for donkey’s years. But I don’t know if you would agree. I think Blue Sky and LinkedIn have been two of the social media platforms that have benefited the from people shying away or moving a completely away from Twitter. What’s your thoughts about that, Nika?

 

[00:22:07.740] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah, I think so. And I think part of the reason in particular for LinkedIn, and I think that’s an interesting observation, is that you have thoughtfully put together lists of certain topics and things on Twitter, right? In a way that I think a lot of people don’t. I have lists when I was on Twitter, I had lists too. And a lot of these… Blue sky lets you make your own lists, allows you to make your own communities around a hashtag, which is also interesting. But I think the thing with LinkedIn is, if I’m scrolling my feed, it makes it very easy to follow content and filter it in a way that’s a little bit more, I think, automatic than other platforms that I’ve seen. So I could see why people would be going to, both those places, Blue sky and LinkedIn, as they were leaving Twitter. The one thing I really miss about old Twitter was when they would have live events and they’d have a chat, there’d be a virtual event. So I used to do some work for a financial planning firm and they’d have personal finance chat. And it was I wasn’t that, it was a shorter hashtag, but it had the company name in it.

 

[00:23:19.040] – Nicole Ouellette

But they would have it every Wednesday afternoon for an hour. It was always the same time. It was Wednesdays at 4: 00 PM Eastern Time or something. And people and use that hashtag and ask their questions And because they knew there was a financial planner on live at that time, they would participate in it. So I think I’m with you. I don’t like this continuous open-ended conversation stuff, but I always really liked that, okay, for an hour, we’re going to get together online, and we’re going to use this hashtag, and we’re going to have a conversation about this topic, or we’re going to bring in an expert about this topic. I missed that about the old Twitter.

 

[00:23:51.320] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, there were also groups, I was exposed to it a little bit a couple of years ago, where I’ve got the terms involved, where you had groups, and I forgot the term. They would use Twitter to attack you in a mass.

 

[00:24:12.210] – Nicole Ouellette

Oh, yeah. What’s the term? I don’t know what the term is, but I know what you’re talking about.

 

[00:24:17.790] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I was exposed to that. It was a couple of years ago to that, and it really left… I’ve never engaged in that content as somebody that believes, well, we’re going to use this term, which is that there’s a lot of terms that we use in our general language that don’t really mean anything We think they mean something, but so I believe in free speech to a certain degree, but what does that really mean? It’s such a loose term, such a bounded term. But in general, because of my culture, I come from I’m from the UK, I come from England. You got to be really… There’s people I really don’t like. I don’t like their views. There’s other people, I just don’t like them. But I don’t believe that it should be banned from existence because if there’s no choice, that’s a bit of a for a democracy. But I don’t like… But on the other hand, I’ve never engaged in online bullying and joining a mob going after people because I think that’s a bit sick myself.

 

[00:25:50.860] – Nicole Ouellette

I agree. You can have your own views. It’s when you start attacking and involving other people. And in those views that I feel like it’s it’s gross. I think the term we were looking for a minute ago is dogpiling. Is that what the term we were looking for?

 

[00:26:04.310] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s another term for it. There we go. All right. But I think what the nice thing when it comes to a membership is that if I was looking at it, because of the link business, I’ll be looking at Pinterest, I’ll be looking at Blue Sky. It does apply to LinkedIn as well. They got the same as the more traditional platforms is that if you try and share a link, it’s not going to be shown to as many people as possible on LinkedIn. They were looser for quite a while. They were hybrid where you got reduced, but it didn’t get as reduced as something like Facebook or Twitter. That still might be the case. I’m going to have to revise my research on that. But they’re in between. You did get penalized, but Facebook was notorious. They were the worst of the worst. If you tried to share a link, you When you’re talking about organic social media reach, you just got hammered. Would you agree with that, Nicole?

 

[00:27:21.690] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah, I mean, increasingly, I feel like these platforms have been just giving us less and less as creators. The content we produce on our business pages and online in general keeps people on these platforms. And it’s a balance. I understand they want to make as much money as possible, but how many billions of dollars is going to be enough, right? So what I like about these platforms is that they’re hearkening back to the start of social media, which is, if you remember back in 2008 or 2007, where you could post a link on Facebook and it would get a ton of clicks, tons. And I remember telling my clients, Oh, yeah, we’re going to only post three times a week because otherwise it would be too much. My God, I missed those days.

 

[00:28:08.910] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, but before we go for our break, they’re the three. I’m going to be talking some others because there’s a couple that we’ve got more of an extensive list. We’re going to go for our break, and we’ll be back in a few moments. Three Two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I just want to point out Nicole. Nicole runs a social media platform, not platform, but a social media agency. And Nicole, what are some of the things that you can help clients with?

 

[00:28:47.880] – Nicole Ouellette

Well, I just wanted to mention a service that we started about a year ago called Trend Descend. If you have noticed, your social media platforms want you to post short videos. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have infinite content ideas. And the ones that I do see, I’m not going to do a silly dance. I’m not going to… There’s just certain things that I’m not going to do.

 

[00:29:08.180] – Jonathan Denwood

Do you think I should do a silly dance, Nika?

 

[00:29:10.670] – Nicole Ouellette

I feel like it could go over well. I don’t know how good of a dancer you are. I haven’t… Oh, you’ve got skills. He’s got skills in case you’re not watching.

 

[00:29:18.690] – Jonathan Denwood

I’ve got those skills when it comes to dancing.

 

[00:29:20.330] – Nicole Ouellette

You just demonstrated. But yeah, so my cat really also wants you to check out Trend Descend. He has short legs and a short attention span. And So the great thing about these trending videos is that I basically look across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. I see if there’s something that’s popping off that applies to businesses. And twice a week, I send a text message, and I’m like, Hey, here’s the trend. I do a demonstration of the trend myself, and I link to it across the platform. So you can attach the trending audio and post your trend to these platforms while filming one video that is going to take you approximately 15 minutes to record and edit. So these are short videos. They get great engagement. And as an experiment on my YouTube channel for the last two months, I’ve been posting all the trending videos on my YouTube channel with my long-form content. And that’s the platform I do the best on. It’s the platform I have the largest audience, the most interaction. And I thought, these trending videos aren’t really going to do anything. But those stupid things that I spent 15 minutes on, not the things I spent hours on, right?

 

[00:30:18.880] – Nicole Ouellette

The things I spent 15 minutes on are getting twice the number of views and the same number of likes as my long form content that take me from content. So if you want to be more visible on social media, I suggest trying trending videos. They don’t all have to be silly dances. I promise I will find the ones that aren’t. So check out trenddescend. Com, and you can get a twice weekly text message with the trend. Basically, I make it as easy as possible, and it starts at 49 bucks a month. So check that out.

 

[00:30:47.800] – Jonathan Denwood

Sounds fab. All right, on we move. On we move. On we move forward. I’m going to butcher this. Is it Pixified or PixFed?

 

[00:30:58.130] – Nicole Ouellette

Pixel fed, I think. So Tell us more.

 

[00:31:01.900] – Jonathan Denwood

I did some research for this show. Tell us more about this.

 

[00:31:08.540] – Nicole Ouellette

Well, it’s like, right. There’s a lot of different things coming out right now. And I was sitting in a meeting with some people the other day. They’re like, Hey, Nicole, what social media site are we supposed to be on? And somebody in my group was like, there’s not going to ever be one social media site ever. And it’s like, yeah. And so you can’t keep up with all these platforms. So basically, as you’re listening, there’s one that speaks to you. Just You can just do one of them. You can just do Blue Sky, or in this case, Pixel Fed. So Pixel Fed is an Instagram alternative. So if you’ve ever thought, I miss the days where Instagram was just about sharing nice pictures. That’s what Pixel Fed is. And so Pixel Fed is an image sharing app, but it’s in the ecosystem of Noster, N-O-S-T-R. And so Noster is a completely decentralized, actually decentralized social media ecosystem, or I guess content ecosystem. I think it’s like notes that we… I think it stands for notes that we share. I don’t know. There’s something about it being notes. But the idea of it is that normally when we post content, I post content to Instagram.

 

[00:32:16.990] – Nicole Ouellette

It is in the cloud of Instagram servers before Jonathan sees it, right? But this doesn’t… There are just these, I think, what are they called? Relays. So it’s like you’re It’s almost like sending an email, for lack of a better word. So if Jonathan has Gmail and I have Yahoo, even though we’re on different email platforms, we can still talk to each other. And I think that’s the idea with this decentralized thing. So you can make an account on Noster And let’s say that I was interested in posting my images, so I could join this pixel fed part of Noster. But let’s say that Jonathan is not interested in that, but he doesn’t feel like joining PixelFed, but he wants to see the pictures that I post. If he joins Noster, he can see the images that I post on pixel fed without having to join pixel fed, because he’s in this ecosystem. So that’s what I like about it. But obviously And then people are like, well, where do I go? Is there noster. Com? And the thing is, there’s a lot of different places you can start your Noster account because it’s decentralized.

 

[00:33:25.480] – Nicole Ouellette

And it’s just this thing to get around where you don’t have a set website, a set username and password.

 

[00:33:34.540] – Jonathan Denwood

As you were talking about it, I was getting a vibe because I really don’t… It just came on my radar, you added it to the list, and I did a little bit But as you’re talking, it’s got this vibe that it’s… In this section where it’s competing with Instagram and Pincris, but it’s where Blue Sky is that hybrid. So it’s not Twitter, but it’s not Mastodon. Is that middle- Yes. Where I see- I think that’s an excellent point. I see Pancris has been the hybrid at the present moment. If you really don’t want to spend too much on the Instagram, but you like your content is visual, I would look at Pancris. But this, to me, as you’re talking, is the visual thing, very similar to what Mastodon is to Twitter. Am I on the right track here?

 

[00:34:49.780] – Nicole Ouellette

I think so. I don’t know as much about… I’ve been just getting into Noster myself. I made an account, so I have a public and a private key, and I know that there’s more that I can do. I can access content across a variety of servers. I know that. Like I said, what’s nice is that I can see content that is part of this unified network. I think they call it the Fediverse. There’s this unified network, and I can see content across it without having to join all these individual places. But also, I can have a central place for my content. And because there is not one central server that for it to go through, I can make sure that my message is seen because it’s not… It’s going over… Because there’s relays. My content can go through a variety of relays. I feel like I’m really butchering the technology behind this, to be completely honest with you. I just find it… It’s just like it’s just such… I think the reason that people… I mean, Nostra has been around for almost two years now, I think, maybe a little longer. And the reason that you’re either just hearing about it now or you’ve heard about it, but you feel a little intimidated by it is because it’s this complete different way of thinking about connecting with other people on the internet, and it’s different than social media, which we’re all really used to.

 

[00:36:09.980] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, but they seem to be trying to offer… They were offering their own membership Creators could work with other creators and share content or sell content between… They’re trying to build a marketplace, plus show content to other people. That’s the vibe I was getting when I was doing the research for this show.

 

[00:36:37.380] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah, and the original builders of Noster were all into Bitcoin. And so it’s one of those- I won’t hold it against them. Well, I think it’s one of those platforms, though, where they’ve thought through from the beginning how people are paid and getting people paid. In this way that these platforms, like an Instagram or whatever, I post content for free, but it’s getting paid off of these advertisements. So the money can go to creators, I think, a little bit more straightforwardly on these platforms than on the more traditional platforms.

 

[00:37:15.480] – Jonathan Denwood

So before we go on to a couple of others that aren’t new, but I wanted to discuss with you, which was basically TikTok and Instagram, Fred. When it comes to Pancris, do And you know anything… Are the user base and the engagement figures, are they increasing recently on Pinterest?

 

[00:37:38.910] – Nicole Ouellette

I think the last time I looked at it because I thought, oh, I just thought, oh, Pinterest is limping along. But it’s been slowly growing its user base over time. It wasn’t like, oh, my God, Pinterest is so hot, and then it died down. It’s been slowly growing. I think it is still very relevant. And what I like about Pinterest is I have pins that I created seven years ago that still drive traffic to my website.

 

[00:38:04.170] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. So let’s talk to, obviously, so what’s going on in the world of TikTok? So they came back and Basically, they got 60 days or something, or is it even- I think it’s even more- I think it’s a 90 day stay right now, right? A stay of execution. And MrBeast and a What’s he called? On the Sharp Tank. Mark Cuban? No, it’s the other one of the… They’re like Mr. Beast, I might be able to- Mr. Wonderful?

 

[00:38:45.110] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, right. So it’s all up in the air, basically. Is that correct?

 

[00:38:50.450] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah. So what happened, I’m pretty chronically on TikTok, for those of you who don’t know. My two platforms of choice are Reddit and TikTok, personally. I understand that as a social media I have to be on the other ones too. But those are my two personal favorites. And what happened was, when TikTok came back and you logged back in, it felt like, when you get home and you are like, I feel like maybe somebody has been in my house something feels off. That’s what it felt like. So certain terms you couldn’t search anymore. You tried to search banned books and couldn’t see anything. Live weren’t working. Everybody He was automatically following, let’s just say, certain politicians that you hadn’t previously followed. You were unfollowing certain politicians that you thought, that you had been following, and you know you had been following. There was just some rearrangements I think that was very subtle, but that made, I think, a collective, okay, I don’t know if we can trust this. I don’t know what’s going on. And people are the way that, I guess, my particular algorithm is talking is it’s like, okay, We have 90 days.

 

[00:40:01.730] – Nicole Ouellette

Let’s organize. Where are we going next? What are we doing? And knowing that our information might be being suppressed, how can we talk about certain things in code?

 

[00:40:12.570] – Jonathan Denwood

And so, you know. Well, I got the new AI. They got the new Chinese AI tools that will get around that.

 

[00:40:19.480] – Nicole Ouellette

Oh, the Deep Seek is really cool. Maybe we can talk about that sometime. But anyway. Maybe next week.

 

[00:40:24.050] – Jonathan Denwood

So you mentioned Reddit, and that’s not new for 24 or 25 But it’s a platform… I’ve never really got into it, really. But I think for somebody trying to build traffic to their membership website, because A lot of people… Because this is a really important conversation. We’re going through these platforms, folks, because it is going to be one of the main… You should have been trying to get that small group of people people that can try your minimum viable course and get feedback. From that feedback, really, you can tone the message of your homepage or your main landing page and really refine the minimum viable course. Getting your verbiage and getting your messaging really spot on, and then using the best you can, these social media platforms to drive traffic to the landing page, to your home page. And I see Reddit as one of the main areas that you might be able to drive traffic. So can you give us an outline of some of the main things you think people need to understand about Reddit?

 

[00:41:48.130] – Nicole Ouellette

Well, it’s it’s forum-based, right? And what you probably noticed is sometime in the last year, when you do a Google search, there’s Reddit results that pull in now as their own… I feel like Google has started prioritizing Reddit content. And what’s really interesting about both Reddit and Pinterest is that on both of those platforms, I have created content. And by create content, I mean, sometimes I post my own threads, but sometimes I comment on other people’s. And obviously, as part of my profile, like any profile on any social media site, I have a link. And the amount of traffic, like things that, I haven’t posted, I think to the business account I have on Reddit in over a year. I still get traffic from Reddit every month to my website from what I have built there, and the same from Pinterest. So if you’re looking for, I think the frustrating thing with social media is that you put in this effort and you make this content, and then there’s this time to live that the content has, that it’s going to show up for people. And in some cases it’s hours. In some cases it might be a couple of days.

 

[00:42:51.670] – Nicole Ouellette

But, Pinterest and Reddit for me, it seems like it continuously drives traffic for years, for me anyway. And I just haven’t really seen that other, I guess, than YouTube. I haven’t really seen that long term return on posting to drive traffic. So you have different subjects and different forums on the…

 

[00:43:18.750] – Jonathan Denwood

And is there an internal protocol informal about… Because all these platforms, when marketers get aware that basically they get flogged to death, the actual value diminishes because every professional marketer hits it. What is some of the unsaid rules on Reddit? If you join somebody’s discussion and you’re just constantly pushing your products, your services, and content, that you’re just going to get kicked off. What’s the reality of how you explain how to use Reddit in a way that’s consistent and sustainable?

 

[00:44:10.860] – Nicole Ouellette

For example, so I have a Reddit account that I use for my marketing company. And I follow, and they’re called subreddits. There are these communities that you can join, and you can consistently follow when new content is posted there. So some of the subreddits I follow might be small business, small business marketing, might be Facebook advertising. So there’s different communities. And then there’s some silly communities, like what is this cookie cutter? It’s like people just post a picture of a cookie cutter and they’re like, I don’t get what this is supposed to be. And people try to help them out. So it ranges from very serious topics, like I’m running this campaign on Instagram, and this is the results I’m getting to. Is this a Flamingo cookie cutter or what? So I join, obviously, the more business and marketing ones. And when someone posts a question or a topic of discussion, I comment what I think is useful information. And occasionally, if there is a resource on my website that makes sense to mention, I’ll be on the Instagram campaign, I’ll say, oh, hey, I explain this whole lead generation thing. I can explain it here a little bit, but if you want more detail, here’s a link to my blog post about it, in case that’s…

 

[00:45:26.300] – Nicole Ouellette

So I’m not directly selling my own stuff all the time. And I think what happens is if you have some thoughtful answers, you’ll have people who go back to your profile, see who you are.

 

[00:45:34.770] – Jonathan Denwood

It has a lot of relevance if you’re trying to build an audience for a membership. That’s also the main thing you can use on LinkedIn. If people are asking questions on LinkedIn, you can answer them. If you put a link into it, it builds credibility. So Pincris, Reddit, LinkedIn to some degree. I think it’s a very different platform is YouTube because through the comments and the ability of YouTube video to live on quite a while and drive traffic to your website. I think we’ve got a quiver of different platforms that can publicize your membership, your course. What’s your thoughts about Instagram threads? Because when it was launched, it was going to destroy Twitter. See, I’m a Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, with a little bit of Facebook, but I try and be consistent on those. I’m not really into Pincrease. Reddit, I’m probably going to have to, because of this conversation, really look at that. But I’m not I’ve been an Instagram person. I haven’t even got an Instagram account, and I’m not into TikTok either. They really pushed it, and they got the numbers, but What I hear, it’s there, it’s got substantial figures, but there isn’t much going on.

 

[00:47:24.840] – Jonathan Denwood

What’s your own thoughts about it?

 

[00:47:26.920] – Nicole Ouellette

Are you much going on on TikTok, you mean?

 

[00:47:29.550] – Jonathan Denwood

No, Instagram threads.

 

[00:47:30.530] – Nicole Ouellette

We’re on Instagram threads. Yeah, I mean, honestly, at the beginning, it was just funny to me. And I posted a video about it when it first came out and it was like, oh, did Mark Zuckerberg copy X or whatever? And I was like, My whole pieces of that was like, every social media platform is essentially the same thing, just repackaged slightly differently. Like you said, certain ones are more visually driven, certain ones are more video driven. I think the thing I don’t like about threads, but what I like about Reddit, is that if I’m going to, I guess, be interested in a topic, and I want to keep talking about it, I don’t like with threads, and that’s probably why I don’t really like Twitter, is that someone starts the conversation and you’re having the conversation underneath that. And it’s not really associated with a community in this direct way, which is, I guess, what I like about Reddit. Yeah, Instagram threads isn’t really.

 

[00:48:29.820] – Jonathan Denwood

I always thought Twitter’s interface was a dog’s breakfast. You get used to it, but it’s not intuitive in any shape or form.

 

[00:48:39.300] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah, I think also being a woman on Twitter just has never been very fun. And I think what I like about Reddit is my personal username is completely… You would never guess what it is, and it’s completely gender-neutral. So I don’t interact like a woman on there, and I don’t have to, which is nice.

 

[00:48:59.630] – Jonathan Denwood

Sadly, I’m no saint, but I always think people have their romantic… You get people that made a fair bit of money, and for some reason, they want to open a pub or buy a pub or a bar in the US. Some people, they do quite well out of it, but the majority lose everything. I point out to people, people can be pretty bad, but when you get a few drinks in them, you really do see the worst of them. I just get a bit louder and I laugh a bit more. But I knew people that if they got a few drinks in them, a real mean side appeared suddenly. And I always think social media is like the bar. People have no control over themselves at all. Let’s move on. You got Skylight. What’s this about?

 

[00:50:02.830] – Nicole Ouellette

Well, so when we were talking about… So we talked about Pixel Fed being part of Noster’s ecosystem. The thing with going back to Blue Sky is it’s built in a protocol called the AT Protocol. And when TikTok was in the process of being banned, Mark Cuban came on and said, listen, if someone wants to build a TikTok platform with AT Protocol, I will fund it. And I think that drew a lot of attention to this AT Protocol as a foundation that this ecosystem of content. So for example, one of the people that interacted with the Mark Cuban video is one of the developers of this app called Skylight. And it’s in beta right now, and you can sign up to be a beta tester. So it’s live now. But what it is, is it takes video video content that you posted on Blue Sky, and it makes that infinite video scroll of TikTok. Because it’s built in the same protocol. So what’s nice about it, if so, if you’re thinking, part of the reason that you’re hesitant about this besides a bit of a learning curve is like, I’m going to build up my social media platform on this thing, and then I’m going to have to move again.

 

[00:51:23.040] – Nicole Ouellette

The idea is that as the creator and as the person posting content, you have control not But only over the ownership of your content. By the way, did you know that in beta is training, it’s training its AI on images and stuff that you upload? That’s a whole other thing. But as a creator, not only do you have control over the content.

 

[00:51:40.220] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s going to be because of the As a businessman, he’s been hugely successful as a human being. I’m not going to go there because I can start ran. But what they’re suggesting and what he has publicly announced a couple of weeks ago, and they’re going to be generating those. It really seems it’s going to go really the Twitter road to some extent. Obviously, If that doesn’t really… But we’ve got to be honest, a lot of people that go to social media platforms is to get worked up, is to get rattled because it does encourage more engagement. But it got to the stage where I I just banned. I didn’t really want to do it, but there were some people… It got to the stage where there was no point in commenting or discussing anything. In some ways, I see that as a problem for a lot of these traditional social media platforms. They become so skeptic, and so I think they might have some problems with user slowly declining. It’ll be interesting because like I say, he’s a businessman. It’s just be interesting to see how all this plays out, really, won’t it?

 

[00:53:12.660] – Nicole Ouellette

Right. And I don’t know. Like I said, I just like the idea personally of a creator of posting my content somewhere and having to display other places too, without me having to do anything extra. So my message could be seen by a lot more people than you know know about. And if you have something to sell people, that’s a nice accidental perk of using these platforms. And like I said, so there’s a couple of these major ecosystems that you could potentially be a part of. And because it’s still, even though they’ve been around for a couple of years, it’s still early days. So you just have a real opportunity to join these emerging platforms as they grow and be a part of building a community there that where people aren’t bullies and just posting inflammatory content to be ridiculous.

 

[00:54:04.480] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it’s all very difficult because it is extremely difficult because both scenarios, do you just want a group where you’re just, this is the problem, and it’s probably you do need a platform that can cope. You might want a group where it’s just people that you have very similar views to, which is fair enough. So it’s just an echo chamber? Or do you want a platform where you got more different people with different views, but there are some boundaries? In the UK, I was used to getting in with people that had much of the different views. I have family members that are much more juditionally conservative. And we can have, to a certain level, we can have a discussion. And you had this tradition in the UK, going into a pub and having a bit of a discussion over a few drinks. You don’t have that in the US. It’s much more culturally and it’s much more in your face, your idiot, blah, blah, blah. That’s my Now, the last one, which I’m going to struggle to pronounce. Orpeto?

 

[00:55:39.030] – Nicole Ouellette

The AT… Yeah, the AT Proton.

 

[00:55:42.610] – Jonathan Denwood

The AT Proto, that’s it.

 

[00:55:44.780] – Nicole Ouellette

Sorry. Yeah, Proto. So this is like all… It’s a a collection of places or things that are using this AT protocol, which is what Who’s Sky is built on and what the skylight thing is built on. But like I said, so there’s a couple of these ecosystems. So If you decide to join one of them, you’re also joining a ecosystem of other apps and servers.

 

[00:56:11.770] – Jonathan Denwood

The main thing that has benefited our listeners that I got from it, it makes transferring to another platform that is based on this protocol and technology easier. Is that correct?

 

[00:56:27.390] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah. You won’t have to go through the same ridiculousness of rebuilding your audience, ideally, in these more decentralized platforms, because not only is your content visible other places, but people can find you in a variety of ways without us both agreeing that we’re going to join this exact website. Like I said, I could follow you. You could decide to join Pixel Fed, and I could decide to join Blue Sky, and we would be able to see content from each other without us agreeing that, okay, we’re going to both go to this exact place and we’re going to post this same content. So I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of promise in these networks. I think it’s worth exploring.

 

[00:57:10.520] – Jonathan Denwood

But what I gathered from this conversation I think we covered a lot of really useful stuff because it is a very changing platform environment.

 

[00:57:22.490] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah, and I’m still learning a lot about it. So if I said something and you look into it and you’re like, you were terrible, feel free to leave a comment to increase it. Yeah, Sure, we have to go somewhere. But at the same time, I’m still learning and there’s a lot to learn, but I think it’s a nice shift. I think this is a good for all of us.

 

[00:57:40.380] – Jonathan Denwood

If somebody was asking me in a membership website and they wanted to know what were the main platforms to drive traffic? Obviously, on the top of their radar is YouTube, and I still think it has the importance, but I think they get overemphasized, YouTube. But I think Blue Sky is a good platform. I think Pinterest is a good platform. To some extent, depending on the type of audience, LinkedIn, that’s a bit of a hybrid. I think Reddit is another good platform. I think because the way they treat external links to whatever extent, these four or five platforms are the ones that in 2025, if you’re looking to start to build an audience, that would be a way that you could attract a landing page and build a pre-launch newsletter list. These are the platforms that I would be looking at. Would you agree with that, Nicole?

 

[00:58:48.090] – Nicole Ouellette

Yeah, no, I think that they’re great. The thing is, I think just because these traditional social media platforms that we think of the Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that are pushing video, I think that’s hard for a lot of people. It takes a lot of energy to you make a video. You have to feel like maybe you have to present a certain way. And a lot of, most of the platforms you mentioned, it’s text and it’s less appearance or image driven, which I think is nice and a lot more relaxing for people who are used to just having to be video ready all the time. I think that, yeah, I think those are great suggestions for driving traffic. And not just driving traffic short term, but these links will last you for a while. Yeah, well, that- Based on, like I said, the traffic I’m getting, which is nice. So the work you’re doing will continue to work not just a couple of hours from now, but for days or months or even years to come.

 

[00:59:38.680] – Jonathan Denwood

See, just to finish up, I think to get this small group of 12 plus students, do a minimum viable course. And then I think the next milestone is to get that… You’ve got to really concentrate is getting those first 100 students. Do your minimum viable course, get your first group, small group, get feedback, really work on the course and the verbiage, and then the next aim is to get… That’s if you’re starting off with no audience, really. I think it’s achievable, but you got to have a plan. That’s what I hope we will outline in the coming episodes, folks. Nicole, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your ideas, Nicole?

 

[01:00:27.670] – Nicole Ouellette

I’m breaking even communications on most platforms, but there are certain ones I’m more active on, but you can also just go to my website, breakingevenink. Com.

 

[01:00:39.010] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. We will be back next week with some knowledge to share with you that will help you build your membership website in 2025. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. Bye.

 

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