Craig Mod was talking about production and consumption systems in his newsletter recently, the idea that social media has evolved to be become both in one. You can’t post on Instagram without being tempted by the photos in your feed. You can’t get to your business’ Facebook page to post an update without catching a glimpse of your friends posts too.
When I was working in social media, we used to get so frustrated by the fact that Facebook required a personal account to maintain a business account. There was no separation between the two. And it made supporting our clients a little tricky as a result. Back then, it never made any sense to me why they wouldn’t build a separate stream for business users.
It’s almost impossible to decouple the two processes. I’ve tried. Which is why, as I’ve increasingly pulled away from most social media consumption, my production on those sites has also slowed to a trickle.
But now I know why. The tangling of consumption and production functions in these services is a feature, not a bug.