Oh the furry community is huge on Twitter. That and Telegram are such hubs for it now. I think you'll find lots of interested folks there

Discord or Telegram is used for sending message and chat directly with your customers, Twitter is normally used for publishing your works,, you could chat on Twitter but things will get messy there as you'll get constant notification from all kind of postings

I'm also considering either of those, I'm just a bit hesitant because I'm not really the chatty type and I feel like that's mainly what those are for? Twitter feels like an easier starting point because it's a bit more 'fire and forget'.

Telegram Channels (not Groups) are good for making announcements, posting works, etc. You can make a group if you want to talk, but it's not a requirement.

Normally I talk with my clients on telegram and discord, and I do forgot few of the chats I have, you don't always have to like go back and fourth on everyconversation you are going to have 24 hours at a time

"Publishing" *shudder*

You know what twitter is very bad at being a tool for?

Browsing people's published artwork.

I don't really plan on using it that way. Mainly I plan to go "Hey, I'm opening for some commissions, who wants in?" in a way that people outside FA can get access to.

Maybe it sucks for that too though, I dunno. This is literally my first go at it!

Your planned usage is probably the best, really--if all you do is pop on to spit out occasional announcements, you won't really run into any of the stuff people complain about. Diddling around any further can at the very least turn into a real time sink. And one advantage to the place over others being suggested is that if you set your account public, your non-FA customers don't even need an account or extra apps or whatever else, anyone can drop by and see your latest posts. So can your FA customers should FA go down, as long as they made note of your account name ahead of time. (I have an account there for pretty much just that reason; outside of that, I've used it so little that I forgot I even had it for several years. And yeah, I saw what you already said about keeping it private..but if all you post is "Commissions open!" who's gonna discover your dark secret? :) )

Telegram and Discord are fairly similar in many regards, with a bit more overhead required both from your end and customers'. If you decide you want to go that route, likely best to set up on both.

I think after all these years and the assorted ups and downs along the way that as long as FA exists and works it'll remain the main hub, even as users splinter off into all those other furry sites. If/when FA does die for good it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Well, that's not all I'm going to post, there may in the future be occasions where I post something like "Hey, here's a poster I made of a fox suckin' some wolf cock, here's a link to where you can buy it" and I don't need that getting into my real life. x3 I did intentionally avoid using "Ruaidri" there in any capacity to help with this, but I don't know enough about how twitter works to be sure that's enough, so for now I think I'll keep it private.

I'm keeping Telegram and Discord in mind, but as someone who is just filled to the gills with anxiety about almost everything new, one new thing is enough stress for today, hah. But it's never good to have all one's eggs in one basket, so we'll see how this goes first!

Hah, righto. You have better ideas than I do how anyone you know irl might correlate fellating foxes with you personally, 'cause I know nothing about you outside of here. Whatever you're comfortable with!

If that's all you do, then people can set it to buzz phones and have a chance at seeing it.
If you converse or post a lot, the choice is to get a bajillion notifications or to turn off the buzzes and hope I randomly see it. Twitter has no middle ground.
I personally have a list of ten people who make my phone buzz.. I can't take more than that. I've crossed a few artists off my want-work-from list because I can't stand the constant buzzing on the offchance I see their once every month or two tweet that they're open. It's why you see a lot of people with split accounts for interaction and announcements.. extra taxing on your end but on my end I'm oh so thankful.

Gotta try it though, good luck! It's certainly an adventure into the realm of making it simultaneously too easy to interact and yet impossible at the same time.

That's actually very good info to have, I'll have to keep that in mind. I wasn't sure how I'd go about using it but I want people to be able to use it for notifications of when I'm doing stuff they might be interested in, so if this is the case I'll probably try to keep any chatting to DM's and the like so people can keep notifications on and not go insane.

I'm sure there's many experiences to be had.
When you follow someone, you can go to their header area and tap the three dots in the upper right.. Turn off retweets is my favorite option.
I can love someone, but still not want to see every meme or signal boost or random thing they want to share to their base... I lose out on that whole "retweet for the not late night crew" aspect when they retweet themselves to signal boost their own shouts into the void.. But that's a cost of living with less notifications.
If Twitter had an inbox, I could sit down and go through it on my time to see what I've missed.. But it's an endless scroll until you reach the bottom of your time line feed, but actually infinite. I think it holds around 500 tweets before you just can't scroll any more? A friend who tried to only look once a day kept hitting his bottom and missing things still...

By far its a great shouting platform and I'm sure I'm far from using it to efficiency follow people, but my experience has constantly been choosing what prices I'm willing to pay to keep up with the rat race.

Follow some folks, do some whatever <3 nothing else delivers that ease of use and instant gratification on the same scale or the off chance people retweet you.. It's so much easier than sharing a journal link to trickle that information everywhere, but what's the chance a random shout in a crowd gets heard? A very interesting piece of technology. Good luck good sir

Sure sure, and it'll probably work just fine for that.

If you want people to find ya on Twitter it might be a good idea to unrestrict your page otherwise people won’t see your content!

and followed

Sweet. :D

Twitter's big, but the issue with it that I see, is that it's not an ideal model for getting a message out. Anything that you post has to compete with countless others on a singular timeline that constantly gets nudged down by the newest post. And the site is not friendly for having an art gallery, format-wise.

Maybe twitter won't end up being the best format then, I suppose I'll find out. I do need something outside FA for letting people know when I'm opening for stuff though, and discord/telegram feel a little more live-chat focused than I think I'd like, unless I'm misunderstanding . We'll see though!

Discord might be the better option, since you can format your server to be mostly announcement-oriented. It can be customized to whatever you'd like in terms of interactibility.

Oooh a dirty, business-y AD eh?

Gave ya a follow as well

Twitter always felt like a really toxic place to me. The fact furries congregated there is beyond me. I'm typically not interested in the personal lives of every single individual I watch which is what you seem to get a lot of on there. Couple with the general cancel culture and big silicon valley tech... Idk. Im happy with FA

I'm definitely not thrilled about it, trust me. I waited this long for a reason, heh. In a perfect world I could just live out my days on FA and let that be that, but it's starting to become a bigger issue these days so I need -something-. Twitter might not be it in the long run, but I don't know 'till I give it a shot I suppose.

Good on you for trying, at least. As one of the most prolific and recognizable creators, you're probably gonna attract a ton of attention. Though the twitter sphere, I definitely get the feeling is more focused on hype and popularity, over searchability and organization.

Well, Twitter seems to have a reputation and a "reputation". Still, good luck with them. Remember to have fun.

If I start having bad experiences I'll ditch that place in a heartbeat, I'm not super attached to it. But we'll see how it goes first I guess!

followed! says it's protected account tho.

don't worry, i will respect the businesslike purpose of the account and continue to send you 3d shitposts via FA notes

Yeah, I haven't decided if I want just anyone to be able to see what I post there or not. If the account looks even vaguely furry related I'll just accept it immediately, but I'm a bit worried about the potential for RL people to somehow stumble across it. Easier on me if they can't just see it without any effort. x3

as mentioned above, the telegram channel might be a better idea (or a parallel one). channels are one-way communication from the owner, groups are two-way. telegram annoys me though so i don't use it much (very phone-centric...) but YMMV :P

does this mean possibly chances to throw money at ru in the mid to long future? :D

Yeah, I don't use my phone much at all so anything phone-centric is gonna push me away. Even twitter is already proving kind of annoying with how obviously phone-based it's UI is. We'll see if it proves useful enough to overcome it's annoyingness. x3

But yes, hopefully! I'm hoping to be able to polish off the last of my commitments before this year is over... hopefully well before, at which point I can start to take commissions in a more whoever-I-feel-like kinda way. Which will be nice!

Best of luck :P It's still a formidable list.

Twitter is nice because you can reach out to other artists and talk shop and it's so cool! But it's also exhausting, mentally, keeping up with what's going on

I wish they'd make a gallery view...

Getting through them isn't too bad, that's just a matter of sitting down and doing the work. I'm not bad at the grind.

The hard part is getting people to actually check FA/respond to messages/have an idea ready. They're the last people left on the list for a reason, at this point. x3

oo oo i have an idea if you need one!

yeah can i get a uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh bondage?

(Real talk tho, keeping an "ideas folder" is good for both artists and commissioners)

Followed! I hope you find it more useful than bothersome, but only time will tell.

If you do decide to go with multiple places to pay your works and announce things, you might want to look into a tool like postybirb or something, do you can do it once and have it populate all the places.

I've had a quick read of the other comments and I'll add in my little bit.

I personally don't like Twitter, BUT. I have noticed that a lot of artist that I follow who do set them selves up a twitter account drop their interest in FA pretty quickly because they just seem to get way more attention on that platform than here.

My theorie is that because of just how large Twitter is, plus the fact that it supports way more media types than FA (Most animation related artists use Twitter for this reason) FA is definitely being contested as the king of furry websites.

Some comments have mentioned Telegram and Discord but I'm not sure if those will help you get discovered much as people tend to find those through your FA, Twitter, e6 or whatever platform you primarily host your art on.

I'll give you a follow, hopefully it can boost your discoverability or however that works on Twitter XD

One can never be sure about the future, but I personally don't forsee that happening to me. I've always hated posting art publicly anywhere that isn't specifically created with furry/adult work in mind. Even after being on it for several years I'm still not comfortable with Patreon and if there was a furry specific alternative that had any chance of working I'd switch in a heartbeat. (Maybe someone should get on that...)

So twitter might be a useful tool, but I'll probably never be comfortable anywhere quite like I am here.

...thanks for the follow though. x3

Twitter is very great way to get noticed. Gotta also recommend discord, massive furry groups and great way to get noticed, good luck my dude, :D

After I get back to arting more (late spring). I might make two twatter. One to announce new shit on the other to be social on. That way folks don't get overwhelmed by me rattling.

Is the account just for updates or will you be posting artwork? I'm kinda confused as to why it's a locked account

I'd say it's for announcements. So commission openings, but I might also be directly posting or posting links to naughty animations, or stuff I'm selling, there will definitely be obvious adult content shown on it eventually, even if it's not going to be a gallery replacement. I just wanted that one extra layer of protection from just anyone finding what I'm doing... but I'm extremely unfamiliar with twitter. Is it an issue for some reason? I'm pretty much just auto-accepting any account that's somebody I know IRL, hah, so it shouldn't be a concern should it?

Don't know*. Somebody I don't know IRL.

Every tool has its purpose :). Followed!

Some people you'd reach here best, some over there, some completely elsewhere.

But twitter sucks so much... so woke...

Got a telegram group for announcements? Would love to commission you again. :3

Weird, I can’t find it when I search for it.

Really? That's weird indeed, I'm not sure why that would be. Lotsa other folks have signed up so far, I don't know enough about twitter to know why it might not be showing up to some people. D:

There’s a lot of variations without the underscores, and one with _thing on the end, but not a match for the name you posted.

Could you just copy and paste the link directly into the address bar? Seemed to work here.

didn't work on iphone, but it did on PC. Don't usually use twitter on my desktop

You got your Twitter locked 😭

Does that... matter? As long as I'm accepting pretty much everyone it should be fine, right?

Pretty sure it’ll keep new people from finding you which I’m pretty sure is the point right? You want random new people to find you and follow you but if you’re locked out then it kinda defeats the purpose

Please continue to communicate everything here as well. Twitter is absolutely terrible for anything that didn’t happen extremely recently (going back to see old posts, etc).

Don't plan to do much of anything exclusive to twitter, just a way to yell about being open for commissions and stuff to people who aren't on FA/don't check FA often. Other than a quick initial thing I did there to test it out, any announcement made there should be here as well.

Good to hear!

Oh boy! Twitter is pretty stressful for some folks. If you find yourself feeling unhappy by the rampant doom and gloom, or the stressful news articles they shove in your face, I recommend a browser extension like Calm Twitter (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/.....ldkldocj?hl=en). It gets rid of a lot of the targeted-ad-like stuff and makes things a lot smoother.

Strongly recommend searching your browser's extensions for something like "Minimal twitter" (e.g.: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/.....aigbeloiidbflp )

The interface is crammed with extremely unhelpful and frustrating ads, suggestions, popups, and sidebars. These pare it down to something less obnoxious.

Telegram channels are good for this too and I can talk to you about em if you want :3

I hear the same thing and get a sense that is the case; but always find myself chekcing the few messages & @'s over on it then. . . then I'm kinda done? \:S

Mebbe I'm just bad @ Twitter or something; but I prefer a more organised format for keeping better track of art-stuffs (in a gallery or channel sense)

all platforms have their own goods and bads. and artists reach different kinds of people on them. all makes sense to be on many, but yes, thats some work indeed.

*very nod*