No Longer the Product

I was very disappointed when Hootsuite changed it's rules, many years ago, and stopped allowing Facebook to be a stream on its platform. And in turn, that may have been the beginning of the end of my Facebook presence.

Hootsuite, which I used to send notifications about my blog posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, was a convenient one-stop shop for scheduling posts. And while I also used it as my main desktop platform for viewing my Twitter feeds, it was a great tool for social media.

But then it dropped Facebook, and I had to duplicate my posts manually to that platform. It became a bit of a pain for me, as I would set up my posts for all platforms on Hootsuite before I went to sleep and I wouldn't have to worry about my blog notifications for the rest of the next day.

Except, now I would have to duplicate a post for Facebook, manually, every time I wanted to announce a new blog post.

And then, about a year ago, I learned that Hootsuite was going to force you to upgrade and pay if you had more than one platform. It was at this point when I stopped using it. It no longer suited my needs. I'm cheap and I don't like to pay for these services.

I thought I was the product, after all.

I've been using Bitly to shorten my blog Web links ever since I started using Twitter, and it made sense to do so. With its original 140-character limit, including links, space was at a premium. I have thousands of Bitly links going back more than 10 years.

Even after Twitter stopped counting URLs as characters, I continued using Bitly because it had become a habit. But no more.

I learned, this month, that I had a limit to the number of Bitly links I could create in a month. It's 12. Not nearly enough to cover my blog posts, which is usually around 18 to 20 per month. My last Bitly link was on September 18.

Because I'm no longer on Hootsuite (nor Twitter, nor Facebook, and barely even on LinkedIn) I have to manually post a blog announcement on my main social-media site, Mastodon, and then I copy that post and paste it into my Threads feed. If I remember, later in the day, I repost that announcement on each platform.

My process is no longer automated.

Since when did we stop being the product for these sites?

It makes no sense for me to continue to use Bitly in October, once my 12-link allowance starts again. I may as well use the link for my blog posts directly. There's nothing to be gained by shortening a link.

How about you? What services did you use regularly but have stopped because of limiting factors?

I understand that these are businesses that want to make money, and I've been benefitting from a free ride for years. But because I don't make any money from my blog, I can't justify an expense to notify my followers when I can do it myself, for free.

At The Brown Knowser, you've never been a product.