Is 2025 the year of the social media ick?
maybe it's time to be disloyal to the apps that drain us
I used to know a woman who made six-figures as a 'Vine' star. Do you remember Vine? It was a short-form video app, bought by Twitter back in 2012, and allowed its users to stitch together a six-second video, known for its looping effect. This is of course pretty commonplace now, since the explosion of ‘the content creator' (according to the Financial Times, there are over 16 million content creators in the UK alone) but back then it was quite a rare job to have. The app exploded in popularity, and then in 2016, Twitter suddenly shut it down. Overnight, it vanished and this woman was suddenly jobless with zero income.
You could say Vine was somewhat the first iteration of TikTok, which has almost 2 billion active monthly users. Cut to now, online creators are once again worried about their livelihoods, with the potential upcoming ban of TikTok in the U.S, which has arisen amid security concerns that the app might pass on user data to the Chinese government. According to the BBC, President Tr$mp has signed 'an executive order granting TikTok a 75-day extension to comply with a law banning the app if it is not sold'. A recent Forbes article interviewed various TikTok creators, and said it would 'upend the lives and livelihoods of creators' who had spent years and years building their audience.
I have made a career out of writing online since I was 19 years old. Millennials were the first digital natives, albeit with a Nokia 3210, and when I was 25, I decided to document these years in a book published by Penguin chronicling a life spent navigating the internet as a teen onwards. Perhaps it’s no surprise that I’ve spent the last decade moving around the internet like a digital Dick Whittington. Here is a list of places I’ve spent time building audiences over the years: Blogger.com, Wordpress, Tinyletter, Tumblr, MailChimp, SquareSpace and now Substack.
What does (online) career longevity look like now? And is it possible to stay platform agnostic?
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2025 is going to be a very focused year here on Substack. Over 65k+ of you open my Sunday Scroll round-ups every other weekend (my curated lists of what I’m reading/watching/listening to.) Although I don’t know the exact future of this platform, I know I absolutely love having a place to write regularly. The Hyphen is the top 10 most-read literature Substack newsletter globally—with thousands of paying members and growing (including all 50 states of America, no less!)
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In case you’re new around here, a little intro: I’m Emma Gannon, a writer of fiction and non-fiction and I host creativity retreats all over the world. I have a new novel coming out next year called Table For One, and I’m as excited as ever to keep writing via this newsletter about creativity, publishing, wellbeing, travel, and keeping our JOY alive in this wild world.
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