Social

We've had a long-standing belief about social networks that we'll clarify here.

Jump to:

• What you should know
• Traffic
• How to use
• Video

What you should know

This will deal specifically with Threads, but the principles apply generally across all social networks:

• anything you post here will never be seen after 24 hours, which makes this more of a short-term "messaging" app than anything long-term useful, so treat it as such
• we don't know if Threads will take off long-term or actually send traffic to food blogs, so we recommend trying it but not over-committing to it
  • we'll review whether sites are getting any meaningful traffic in 6-12 months and update our suggestions accordingly
• the entire reason Threads exists is to generate ad-revenue for Meta, period.
• Meta generates revenue when you, and your audience, are using the app and get presented with an ad. You get revenue when people leave the app. This means that your goal (get people off the app) and Meta's goal (keep people on the app) are polar opposites and they will screw you over long term because they're being paid to
• most likely (someone read the T&C?) they're using the content you submit (text, recipe hero shot, ingredients, cooking instructions) to train their own LLM like chatGPT
• this means that you're providing content for their AI for free, which can be weaponized against you in the future (eg. by building their own recipe generator to be used IN APP instead of letting visitors leave)

The timing of this TEXT-BASED app being launched, coinciding with chatGPT's rise and Twitter blocking scrapers to it's text content is not a coincidence.

Traffic

Currently, Pinterest sends minimal traffic and Facebook can send a decent amount if you figure out how it works.

However, these companies can pull the plug at any time, and it's in their interest to do so once they've extracted every ounce of value from you.

Instagram, Twitter, Threads, etc. don't currently send any meaningful traffic.

Even though these platforms don't directly send traffic, it does provide a medium for your audience to view and engage with your content, and that offers secondary benefits.

How to use

Our recommendation for social networks is that you post the finished product image + your intro paragraph + link to your site (where possible).

Provide a teaser, and force a click.

Video

All social networks are moving towards video, in various forms.

In general, you should be working towards figuring out how to film video both for your site/recipes, as well as social networks.