|
Just some quick context: the following insights are drawn from my analysis this month of the main social pages of all New Zealand councils, government departments, departmental agencies, non-public service departments, and Crown agents. Now let’s get cracking… 1. Twitter is dead, but so is Threads Yeah, an obvious one to start, but the decline has continued at pace in 2024. I mean, there are a few organisations still using X, but they are very much just going through the motions. There is very little effort, and no innovation or energy of the kind that made it such a fun place so long ago. X’s decline can be seen most clearly at local government level. Of New Zealand’s 78 councils, just 8 are still using it (down from more than 30 in Jan 2023). For central government there are more users, but again, it’s pretty half-hearted stuff. Even NZ Police has ditched Twitter along with its 100k audience there. As for Threads, well I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’ but it seemed crazy to me a year ago that stressed-out teams with limited resources were voluntarily rushing to sign up to yet another channel. So I don’t think it’s surprising that of the 10 or so councils that quickly adopted Threads, not a single one has posted on the platform in 2024. For central government, there are a couple of notable exceptions. NZ Police and the Defence Force are both giving Threads a decent nudge. But by and large my ‘told you so’ still stands. What will happen next with the X vs Threads battle? Who knows. The Washington Post did a pretty good one-year-on roundup article earlier this month (you should be able to read it if you haven’t used your freebie allowance).
|
