Features
A setup guide to social media's real benefits: separate jobs, plan an exit
A setup guide for social media benefits: separate discovery, coordination and record, build for exit early, and be findable on one axis only.
Desk
Method Desk
The mechanics of web meme history, explained without assuming prior knowledge.
Maintenance
Five critiques of social media, weighed
Five recurring critiques of social media, weighed: each one's core claim, where it overreaches, and the evidence that would move it, plus what they share.
Features
Internet culture archives move constantly: writing a citation that survives
Internet culture archives move under your citation in five ways, only one of which looks broken, and this is how to write a reference that survives it.
Industry
Generational digital culture research: untangling the effects
Generational digital culture research cannot separate age, cohort and period effects from one survey. Here are the methods and the data sources that can.
Industry
How three kinds of adoption reshape a social media format
Social media updates from outside a format: three kinds of adoption, what a built-in button does to variance, and how to test the burnout claim.
Rules
Benefits of social media timeline: how handoffs work
Benefits of social media timeline work: how to trace handoffs, establish relative order, label dates, mark gaps, and keep corrections visible for review.
Guides
Social media view counts: what the number actually includes
Social media statistics explained: what a view can mean, why deduplication decides everything, and how to write a count down without overclaiming.
Rules
How COPPA and California's design code change social apps for US teens
COPPA sets the federal baseline for kids' data, while California's Age-Appropriate Design Code adds design duties that reshape teen social apps across the US.
Rules
What does the FCC actually regulate on US social platforms?
FCC social platforms sit mostly outside the agency's reach, but robocalls, texts and licensed spectrum bring parts of platform conduct under its rules.
Guides
The Wayback Machine and US copyright, archiving memes without a takedown
Wayback Machine copyright practice lets US researchers cite frozen meme pages, answer DMCA takedowns and keep evidence when a snapshot disappears.
Guides
Is dead internet theory supported by US platform data?
US data show bots are substantial, not a majority. Meta puts fake accounts at 5 percent. Imperva puts bad bots at 32 percent. Read the proxies before acting.
Industry
A rubric for Vine creator payout history claims
A rubric for Vine creator payout history claims: match dated records, grade documentation gaps, and distinguish payment evidence from earnings claims.
Features
The six directions slang drifts in, and their usual order
Six directions social media slang moves in, from narrowing to ironic inversion, with the diagnostic for each and the rough order they arrive in.
Reviews
How to trace where a meme and its virality actually originated
Tracing memes and virality back: what a search can and cannot see, what each kind of evidence carries, and how to write an origin sentence you can defend.
Reviews
Early social networks guide: reading old pages
An early social networks guide to GeoCities, Usenet, IRC, and profile services, with named archives and practical checks for reading surviving records.
Features
7 lessons worth learning about early social networks statistics
Statistics on early social networks do not exist: nobody was counting, the units were not people, and what survived is not a sample of anything.
Features
Structure, not popularity, is how internet communities are best compared
Internet communities take a small number of shapes, and this compares them by threading, persistence, discoverability, moderation tools and ownership.
Rules
Internet communities research: avoiding harm
A practical guide to internet communities research: how to read a community without misreading it, why attention is a hazard, and when to stop before harm.
Industry
Platform timelines examples: six traps and real entries
Platform timelines examples: six traps for social media histories, from rollouts to renames and policy changes, then real dated entries labeled the safe way.
Maintenance
Where platform timelines trends are heading
Platform timelines trends are heading toward login-walled, app-only, unarchived records, and the forecast below names what changes and when.