It proves that Trump’s failed blog was being internalized in a vacuum
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Former President and Former “social media king” Donald Trump has been ruled out by Donald Trump this week turn off his blog of the month, due to his tremendous readership. According to one analysis according to The Washington Post, With Twitter and Facebook blogging, Donald J. Trump’s desk fell from a low of 159,000 on the first day’s peak to less than 30,000 on the second day, and since then they haven’t exceeded 15,000 interactions. It’s Trump reported having decided to close the blog because he thinks that having too few readers has left him looking small and unimportant.
How can someone who promised more than 80 million followers on Twitter before and is banned and remains a major figure in Republican politics create a blog that is not one of those in the contemporary media environment? According to Forbes, Trump’s blog was generating less traffic than the pet-friendly site Petfinder and the food site Eat This Not That.
The answer to poor performance lies in the unrelated dynamics of the functioning of today’s online media ecosystem and how viewers have embraced content on the web. Many of us who study the media have long since distinguished ourselves “Push” and “pull” the media. Traditional radio TV is a classic “push” medium in which multiple streams of content are carried to a user’s device with very little effort on the part of the user, beyond flipping channels. In contrast, the website was initially a “pull” medium; a user often had to actively search to find content that was interesting to them. Search engines and knowing how to navigate them effectively were key to positioning the most important content on the web. While TV for “passive” users was “lean-back” support, the website, we had say, it was a “lean-forward” medium where users were “active”. While these generalizations no longer hold up, it’s a clear distinction to think about why Trump’s blog failed to be so spectacular.
In a highly fragmented web landscape, with millions of sites to choose from, it is a challenge to generate traffic. That’s why the initial website spent millions of dollars on splashy Super Bowl ads on tired old TVs, basically using push support to attract and encourage people to their online content.
Then social media helped transform the network from a pull support to a push support. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook created massive user bases, introduced new scrolling news, and developed increasingly sophisticated algorithmic systems to direct and recommend the content of that news, which became an essential means to garner online attention. Users evolved or deviated from active search engines to passive runners by clicking on any content that their friends, relatives, and platform news feed algorithms put in front of them. This still created an important refrain “If the news is important, you’ll find me.” Ironically, when it started as an essential medium, social media users may have achieved an unprecedented level of passivity in their media consumption. The “potato” on the back bent down “Zombie Smartphone”.
The failure of Trump’s blog has told us that the passionate political extremists who form the core of Trump’s support base are also deeply entrenched in their passive media consumption, dependent on social media, that a traditional blog is incompatible with social media accounts. to create algorithmic amplification, it is impossible to achieve a part of the online engagement that a single tweet can achieve. Even the most public-minded character cannot be freed from the dependence of the platform that promises to distribute audience attention online. If Trump’s blog can’t achieve success without direct access to audience unification and amplification tools on social media, then he can’t do anything about it.
The failure of Donald Trump’s blog is another sign of the great power that giant platforms have over the content we consume. But we want to remind you that we are committed to giving them that power voluntarily and that we are enthusiastic about pulling the network drive model. Finally, we can look back at the failure of Trump’s blog, the coffin of the original model of the web, and the definitive nail in the coffers of the “active” Internet user.
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