So, it’s some­how 2025 and *extreme­ly Jim Anchow­er voice* it’s been a while since I rapped at ya.

How was 2024? Pret­ty great! I fell back­ward into con­sult­ing in late 2023, work­ing with a for­mer col­league in what was prob­a­bly the most reward­ing chap­ter of my career to date. Per­son­al­ly — and I’ll update my media diet in a sep­a­rate post — we trav­eled more than we have in years, with trips that took us back to the Upper Penin­su­la, to Seat­tle and to Point Reyes Sta­tion, Cal­i­for­nia. Mag­i­cal, really.

As I’ve his­tor­i­cal­ly done — you can check the archives — this is the time of year I remem­ber that I’ve had this blog since 2008. It feels insane. Now that I’m an *entre­pre­neur,* I plan to spend more time here, with mix of posts about things that inter­est me, plus pro­fes­sion­al thought lead­er­ship where it makes sense, both for com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mar­ket­ing, plus indus­try obser­va­tions for things that puz­zle me.

For now, I’ll just update on where you can find me online.

• Bluesky is where you’ll find me in cul­tur­al crit­ic mode. If I haven’t fol­lowed you there, it’s only because I’m being very selec­tive about what dis­course I’m engag­ing. Over­whelm­ing­ly, it’s music crit­ics I’ve been read­ing for twen­ty years.
• Threads is where I’m choos­ing to rebuild my tech PR acu­men. It is wild how much has changed in tech media, both in terms of out­lets and play­ers. What I’m find­ing are far more enthusiast/influencer voic­es in the space. This isn’t alto­geth­er sur­pris­ing, but Threads will take some tun­ing. I nev­er *real­ly* left tech, but it’s fair to say I built some dis­tance over the last five years. My tol­er­ance for vapor­ware is at an all-time low.
• LinkedIn is unadul­ter­at­ed con­tent mar­ket­ing and thought lead­er­ship. What I learned in my first con­sult­ing gig is that, true to form, I enjoy high impact trans­for­ma­tion work the most. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is in dire need of new think­ing, strate­gies, tac­tics, mea­sure­ment and evan­ge­lism of all the above, and I’m shar­ing that on LinkedIn.
• Insta­gram is where I fol­low the bands and venues I love, and share music and pho­tog­ra­phy infre­quent­ly via Sto­ries and even more rarely on the feed.
• The Sto­ry­graph is where I’m track­ing what I read.
• Let­ter­boxd is where I track what I’m watching.

But what about every­thing else?

Well, I only scroll Tik­Tok and rarely share any­thing there. Do I feel like I need to do more direct-to-cam­era post­ing? Sure. Will Tik­Tok be where that hap­pens? Maybe.

How about YouTube? Same as above. It’s an amaz­ing, if over­whelm­ing, enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion plat­form. Right now I’m obsessed with Apple pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Black­stone grid­dle recipes!

Don’t even get me start­ed with Face­book. It’s hard to imag­ine a plat­form that has­n’t been gut­ted like Twit­ter meet­ing the same end. The more plat­forms inject “relat­ed” con­tent into the already over­crowd­ed time­line, the more apt I am to check out. Who thinks we have a con­tent sup­ply short­age? Nobody.

Final­ly, I think the notion that social media is in a death spi­ral is over­rat­ed. Do I think some plat­forms are doubt­less head­ed for the exit? Cer­tain­ly. There are demo­graph­ic fac­tors and gen­er­al malaise at play across this land­scape. But do I think peo­ple don’t enjoy con­nect­ing with one anoth­er in fun, if not mean­ing­ful ways online? Absolute­ly not. 

In fact, in my pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion, I’m see­ing more orga­ni­za­tions, dri­ven entire­ly by cost and the real­i­ty of a rav­aged media land­scape, lean even hard­er into syn­di­cat­ing con­tent on their social chan­nels. Does it work? No. Could it? Maybe! But nobody is ready yet to walk away entirely.