In the last two years I've seen a large migration of digital artists off of traditional gallery sites (Deviantart, Artstation, etc) to Twitter as their "gallery". The same thing happened with Tumblr circa 2012-2014, but even those folks are moving to twitter instead of using a dedicated site designed for showcasing art.
I've never had a Twitter account because I'd much rather see ostatus and decentralized networks succeed, and Twitter has never offered anything meaningful in the past, but if this trend continues I'll be stuck signing up there just like I did with Tumblr not to use it as a social network but as a media consumption platform (as was mentioned in the article, video is also growing). Its also similar to how musicians were nigh forced to start using Youtube as their primary jumping off point over Bandcamp and Soundcloud because that was where the eyeballs were.
What kind of backwards world would it be if artists, musicians, animators, etc are all using Twitter as their primary distribution platform just because of the network effects. Same reason Tumblr took off in those circles. It doesn't matter if the UI is lacking even the barest support for effective navigation of media, its all about social bridging and getting into feeds. In my experience about 80% of artists and writers that use Tumblr have their creative works inaccessible because they are buried under a mountain of reblogs and non-content filler posts with limited to no means to filter or navigate them.
I'd hope this trend doesn't continue, but it almost certainly will. Those making a living for themselves through online media are doing so via network effects and memes. Get a breakout success, get into peoples "feeds", and spread through casual retweets and reblogs. Its never about discovery or wanting to find them, its them getting randomly referred to you through the hive mind, and that creates a handful of wildly successful winners and a sea of equally competent and capable creators that never gain any traction.
The trend certainly will continue, if only because that's how it's always worked - even before twitter, or even the internet. TV, radio, newspapers, publishers, etc. have always had this power - you had to market yourself to enough people for someone with influence in one of the aforementioned medias to consider you worthy and propel you to visibility and success.
One might even say that the current state of affairs, or trend, is preferable because it's not some small group of people acting as gatekeepers, but instead it's "the hivemind" as you've put it.
I've never had a Twitter account because I'd much rather see ostatus and decentralized networks succeed, and Twitter has never offered anything meaningful in the past, but if this trend continues I'll be stuck signing up there just like I did with Tumblr not to use it as a social network but as a media consumption platform (as was mentioned in the article, video is also growing). Its also similar to how musicians were nigh forced to start using Youtube as their primary jumping off point over Bandcamp and Soundcloud because that was where the eyeballs were.
What kind of backwards world would it be if artists, musicians, animators, etc are all using Twitter as their primary distribution platform just because of the network effects. Same reason Tumblr took off in those circles. It doesn't matter if the UI is lacking even the barest support for effective navigation of media, its all about social bridging and getting into feeds. In my experience about 80% of artists and writers that use Tumblr have their creative works inaccessible because they are buried under a mountain of reblogs and non-content filler posts with limited to no means to filter or navigate them.
I'd hope this trend doesn't continue, but it almost certainly will. Those making a living for themselves through online media are doing so via network effects and memes. Get a breakout success, get into peoples "feeds", and spread through casual retweets and reblogs. Its never about discovery or wanting to find them, its them getting randomly referred to you through the hive mind, and that creates a handful of wildly successful winners and a sea of equally competent and capable creators that never gain any traction.