Railways: the use of social media

[whole diary]

[Mark A]

Railway companies were early adopters in the positive use of social media to enhance the service they provide. It would be interesting to know their plans for the immediate future. An issue is... the choice of platforms on which to maintain a presence.

I'm thinking currently of Musk's 'X' - given its user base and overlap with their customers, they probably need to continue to be active there. However, given that it's increasingly troubled, it might be good for them to be providing for people who've moved to the likes of Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon.

There are presumably tools out there that avoid the admin task exploding times ten. (One such is 'Buffer' - free for individual use, it's a crossposting tool and I'm about to check whether it's a listening tool too...)

Mark

[Mark A]

An engaging & thoughtful nine minute listen from one Alex Andreou, on the subject of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Mark

https://dcs-cached.megaphone.fm/SANDSTONEGLOBALPRODUCTIONSLTD9524174004.mp3

[grahame]

Railway companies were early adopters in the positive use of social media to enhance the service they provide. It would be interesting to know their plans for the immediate future. An issue is... the choice of platforms on which to maintain a presence.

It would be very interesting to know whether companies will be involved at all. Very interesting to look at user base sizes and transaction rates from time to time - this is around the world.




Source - https://explodingtopics.com/blog/top-social-media-platforms

[Mark A]

Their use has certainly changed and understandably so, some whose responses feel as though they're confined to a set of constrained scripts, others whose staff are given the backing to exercise their own judgement.

Mark

[grahame]

Their use has certainly changed and understandably so, some whose responses feel as though they're confined to a set of constrained scripts, others whose staff are given the backing to exercise their own judgement.

Mark

And that's an example of where in the future there is so much scope for brilliant or diabolical service under 'GBR^▸ (Great British Railways)".     At one extreme, you can look at the early social media work at GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) by the team who set that up, and at the other extreme the service offered through help points across the nation.

I am getting to be an old cynic and I fear it can get really tied up in buraucracy when it gets into public sector rules.   Yesterday, 6th August 2024, I finally got clearance on the wording for a memorial plaque on a bench in the park - request made on 17th January 2023 and been through six different management and administration officers at the Town Council.  All done under a new policy from 2022 that was supposed to make this clear and consistent.  I fear similar with enquiries about trains - the train will have long since arrived into (or is that arrived at?) it's final destination before the question is acknowldeged, to be answered within 10 working days.

[Mark A]

Thinking of the short form text social media, a solution is for organisations to use a service agnostic software package to manage contacts across the lot. I've noooooh idea what software the current set of ex-tocs, rail organisations, bus companies, have settled on for this.

Mark

[Mark A]

First post in this topic for 96 days, and  the world of short-form social media continues to evolve.

Bluesky's up to 14.5 million. David Horne (MD of LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about)) has created a personal account on the platform**.

Mark

** Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Mark A]

Update 1: Bluesky is seeing account creation is abruptly running at around 1 million per day and is about to look in the rear view mirror and see the figure 16,000,000. The  majority of this growth may be from the USA, but the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) is also represented. https://bsky.jazco.dev/stats

Update 2: if anyone here recalls the experience of being in the UK and using was it a teletype to connect to a mainframe or database in the USA at around 4 in the afternoon and experiencing the grim response times, Bluesky's web site has the same flavour today.

Update 3: there are reports that various TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) including GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have accounts set up on Bluesky in readiness to activate them when appropriate**.

Mark

**That time is about now imho, 'cos, reasons.

[ChrisB]

There are no TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) yet visible on BlueSky - but plenty of rail staff & associates like Gareth Dennis.

[Red Squirrel]

Bristol Rail Campaign has seen a sixteen-fold increase in the number of followers on its Bluesky account in the last month. It now has 16 followers. But it’s probably no bad thing to be prepared!

[grahame]

Bristol Rail Campaign has seen a sixteen-fold increase in the number of followers on its Bluesky account in the last month. It now has 16 followers. But it’s probably no bad thing to be prepared!

I registered personally yesterday ( @grahamellis.bsky.social )  ... big review of all my social media and direction for next year

[Mark A]

Bristol Rail Campaign has seen a sixteen-fold increase in the number of followers on its Bluesky account in the last month. It now has 16 followers. But it’s probably no bad thing to be prepared!

Now 17. :-)

Mark

[ChrisB]

There are no TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) yet visible on BlueSky - but plenty of rail staff & associates like Gareth Dennis.

LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) registered today

[Mark A]

There are no TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) yet visible on BlueSky - but plenty of rail staff & associates like Gareth Dennis.

LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) registered today

Indeed.

https://bsky.app/profile/lnerail.bsky.social/post/3layklpn5bs2l

For the moment, they need to discover the 'Your domain in your account name' thing.

And, for the time being, a search on Bluesky for GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), the Coffeeshop account (which clearly identifies that it's not the TOC itself) is top of the list.

Mark

[grahame]

There are no TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) yet visible on BlueSky - but plenty of rail staff & associates like Gareth Dennis.

LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) registered today

Indeed.

https://bsky.app/profile/lnerail.bsky.social/post/3layklpn5bs2l

For the moment, they need to discover the 'Your domain in your account name' thing.

And, for the time being, a search on Bluesky for GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), the Coffeeshop account (which clearly identifies that it's not the TOC itself) is top of the list.

Mark

My bolding.    Darn it - that was not really ready to be shouted about yet!  Please go ahead, follow - but if you want to message / interact with the main membership it's here on the Coffee Shop itself.

https://bsky.app/profile/greatwesternrailway.info



We don't know whether Blue Sky is here to stay, or another transient  or something specialist which is not our speciality / nationality such as MySpace or Mastadon - but it is worth our while having a pointer there. Their use of domain names as handles means we are secure with our names once we have the web domain - so there's interesting scope in other places we own namespace too.