Philately and social media - who do you follow?

Mark, I really like Exploring Stamps on Youtube also. Another one you might consider it Ted Talks Stamps on Youtube. He is a member here but he mainly participates on another forum. Graham on Exploring Stamps is about to start a new vlog and he just did a pilot episode. He recommended philatelovely as well as a couple others that I was less familiar with. It is definitely worth looking at that episode for tips.

I hadn't seen Graham's latest video on YouTube which basically answered my question!!  He mentioned the Digital Philatelist link which is basically a hub of information and is exactly what I was after.  I watched a couple of Ted's videos last night on your recommendation which were enjoyable also.

There is actually a lot out there and funnily enough on the Digital Philatelist website they have a podcast with Graham Beck and he talks about how it's not just a case of creating a FB page or Twitter account and job done but you have to keep producing content to garner traction.  He said it has taken him 4 years to get to 15k subscribers on YouTube which is quite a daunting prospect to anyone else aiming to do the same.  In fact, it's a considerable barrier to entry in my opinion and probably explains why it's not that easy to discover good content online.

YouTube
I also follow Graham @ exploring stamps and Ted Talks stamps. There is also a new one Mallard Stamps that post more than two videos a day! I just follow to see where it ends, (hopeless content). 
There is also announced a new channel witch I think will be good based on the persons posting on Twitter. 
Then there is Conversations with Philatelists witch is more like a podcast, but interesting. I have it on in the background when stamping. 

Twitter
On twitter I follow a lot of people. There is a lot of good content and a lot of not so good content. The important people at APS is all here and a lot of the serious stamp auctions/shops. 

Instagram
Same as Twitter, but les text and mor only images. 

What I do is that I turn of notifying when there is a new post. If not you will get mad of all the pling and plong from your smartphone. I go in and open the app on my phone (or on my PC) when I want to check watts up. 

I think we will see a lot of new stuff on Youtube the next years. To make good content demands skills that not everybody have. I't wort noting if you have a lot of knowlegde abut stamps and philately if you can't present it. And the same the other way. 


Facebook I use only Norwegian sell and bay sits. 

Count me in for Exploring Stamps, Graham has made some fantastic videos. He is switching to a new format but given my enjoyment of his past materials hoping for the best. His previous videos were extremely high quality and very entertaining. His most recent video did highlight the Digital Philatelist, at thedigitalphilatelist.com/. There's a Twitter and Instagram link but I find the page is decent with lots of links.

You paddle the same canoe as I do Michael. I joined Facebook to get some photos of an event, and spent 3 months avoiding people I didn’t know or didn’t want as Friends. no instagram, no twitter, occasional You Tube ...........So why “ follow” ?

Listened to some PSE podcasts which were banal trivia

Most social Media is puff , Influencers , what ever they are , make a living from their followers , Why on earth would I want to contribute ?

I actually belong to many Facebook stamp groups. In the right groups, you can get almost instantaneous answers to questions, which I like when I am working on my stamps and I need a quick answer. But, like others have mentioned, they are not good for in depth studies of anything. Posts scroll by too fast, never to be seen again. You can use the search function to some degree however. I have also made quite a few nice purchases, without the hassle of dealing with ebay and the like. I am always searching Facebook marketplace for inherited collections within driving distance. Just this weekend I bought a 2-volume WW collection and a bunch of loose stamps on the cheap. You just never know what's going to show up at any time. In this case the seller just listed this about 10 minutes prior to seeing it. 10 minutes later and it would have been gone I'm sure.

Of course there are many downsides to Facebook. Like most social media outlets, it's a haven for bad behavior and scams. Also, these groups seem to be the first stop for peoploe who think they've struck it rich because they've found an old postcard in grandmas sock drawer. These get very tedious after a while.

As far as Youtube goes, I've watched a few videos, but most of the ones I've seen are geared towards beginners or at the very least contain basic information I already know. Or the ever popular "10 most valuable stamps" type videos. Maybe I'm not searching for the correct things.

Instagram, Twitter, and everything else, I know nothing about.

Gave up on him after 5 minutes of nothing significant! Life is too short ! 

I was not saying social media is not good. It is.

Just not for me. Sorry, but there is too much else going on for me to sit and watch a video or listen to a podcast or follow someone on Twitter. I have enough as it is. Besides, I must have ADD that prevents me from sitting at one thing for long!

If people enjoy it, fill you boots!

Just not MY cup of tea was all I was saying.

Hi Torbjorn tobben63 ,  I acknowledge, as a grumpy old fart, maybe I ought to have stuck with him a bit longer, but all I saw was him re arranging his room, laying a rug, promoting other podcasts ,something about a T shirt and Machin rugs then having a cup of coffee . 4minutes 20 seconds before he got round to Covid stamps.  Obviously a lot of preparation setting things up and I'd love it if these chats did bring in new blood to the hobby. Maybe it will 


But why does it take these presenters so long preamble to get to the point?    


My wife always told me patience was not one of my virtues.            

I think the point got missed somewhere along the way here and I think we took this thread onto a tangent that Mark really was not asking about. The question was, on various social media platforms, who do we follow, and not our opinions of whether Twitter or Youtube or Facebook were either good or bad or whether we liked using them or not.

Exploring Stamps and The Digital Philatelist and others like them are educating people about stamp collecting again for a modern audience. Exploring Stamps has presented everything from pros and cons of various types of stamp tongs to ways of organizing and maintaining a collection. Even after 40+ years of collecting, I was able to learn a thing or two from Graham Beck's 3 seasons of videos. Right from the beginning he tells you that he is learning about stamp collecting as he creates the various videos. They are presented in an interesting and entertaining way and his enthusiasm for the hobby is evident.

Is it for everyone? Probably not. For those of us who flyspeck or do more in-depth research into postal history of a specific region or look at various paper types, etc...Exploring Stamps is not the best fit perhaps. Many of us who have been collecting stamps for 40 or more years know a lot of what is presented on Exploring Stamps but this is the first time I have seen a series of videos that sort of puts it all in one place. The beginning stamp collector or that person, like many of us, who set aside stamp collecting only to pick it up in later years, has a go-to reference source to learn about topics like mounts, albums, stockbooks, tongs, removing stamps from paper and more...

What I like most about his program is when he takes a stamp out of his big box of kiloware and explores that stamp...it's subject, the postmark, history, connections to other stamps, the culture of the country that issued the stamp, etc...

I cannot go into a stampshow or a bourse and sit down at a table and expect anyone to educate me about stamp collecting as well as Exploring Stamps does. I am certain that nobody has the time or patience to do that with me and I am 56 years old and certainly none of them would have the time or patience to explain the intricacies of stamp collecting with a beginning stamp collector or a child.

So kudos to Graham Beck and Exploring Stamps and all other stamp collectors on other social media platforms! They are bringing in and educating people to a hobby that has become more or less moribund and they are doing it in an entertaining and interesting way that is, from what I am seeing, at the start of a sort of collecting renaissance.

Here are some specifics

1, Facebook - two options.friending (you will see their posts) or joining a group (some private some not). I turn notifications off for selected people and groups. When I open Facebook, I go directly to groups
2. Twitter - follow 2 people but only to see their retweets, not for what they personally say, I do not allow notifications
3. Youtube - subscribed to several for their videos (Beck, Ted Talks, APS) but again suppress notifications
4. TSF - I do not have any friends tagged so do not follow.

The net is I pick and choose what I see and try to limit notifications as much as the platform allows.  I am not a follower waiting to see what someone says.  If the subject is interesting, I will read so at TSF I scan new post threads and read topics that interest me. Yes, I may miss something that could be interesting.

My Facebook page is only for immediate family and a few very old friends, mostly to see the latest pics of all the kids and stay in touch.

I don’t have accounts on Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, etc etc. They are time sinks - I’d rather spend my online time chatting  stamps here on The Stamp Forum or browsing auctions. I avoid notifications, too. 

I do enjoy YouTube, mostly for old videos of concerts and operas and other music, and they have an enormous library of audiobooks that I listen to while putzing on stamps. FYI - just finished an awesome action adventure urban fantasy series by Benedict Jacka - the Alex Verus books. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

It’s great to see the stamp Vlogs on YouTube - good way to spread the word about philately. I “like” and subscribe to show support, but to be honest, I kinda sorta feel like vikingeck , they are aimed at newer collectors so can seem a bit, dare I say, um, boring, to more advanced collectors. But kudos to Ted and others for evangelizing philately. 

That reminds me, Ted asked me to help with an episode - I should probably do that. 

The challenge with youtube and the like is that for a typical 1hr video you cannot get into a lot of detail nor would be it seen. For example, if you had a video of the die varieties of KGVI of Mauritius you would find a very very limited audience. The Collector's Club videos I have seen go into more detail but not real deep flyspecking. The people wanting to make them is likely quite small too.  You need an expert then you need someone who wants to be in a video.  Some of the philatelic elite avoid social media. Unless some group created an education series (along the lines of Great Courses) I doubt videos will get significantly beyond what they are today.

Some groups like The United States Stamp Society has completely avoided social media.

Twitter is definitely a conversation media and is great for networking to locate informations. @stampdent (https://twitter.com/stampden) posts threads on well researched postal history. A lot of the others like Habsburg Philatelist and Musical Stamps link to their blogs. You can create Lists where you add the people you want to follow which can reduce the amount of extra info you see, too.



In regards to Smartphones, they are not the biggest technology to access online philatelic media. Desktop still remains the big one. Discussion boards, in the wide world of social media, are definitely old skool now so it is less likely they will be used on a smart phone.