X: Council Doubles Down On Dumb: PATTON
An Ottawa City Council actually debated creating a replacement for the massive social media program X.
Debating Social Platform X
Mike Patton is the former communications director for Mayor Larry O’Brien and the president of the Ottawa West-Nepean PC Association.
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
That the councillor who introduced the topic of replacing X with a city built app speaks volumes. And not in a good way.
The city uses X, along with a number of other forums, to communicate what the city considers to be important information to the residents, employers and employees thereof of Ottawa.
X is a known product. Among its millions of users, accumulated over the course of more than a decade, are a subset that meet the criteria of the demographic described above – the target market. A new app, specific just to the City of Ottawa, would need time and money to develop and make known. All apps need constant ‘care and feeding’. The city doesn’t just build the app. It needs to constantly fix bugs, add ‘features’, fix more bugs. A city that has a $36 million hole in the middle of its unbalanced budget.
Instead of wasting committee time to discuss this petty, knee jerk, virtue signal about a person who is wielding unauthorized authority in the USA, perhaps the councillor could put his/her/their mind to solving the solvable. Of where to cut expenditures, rather than adding them.
As for the committee chair who allowed this to be on the agenda, clearly you don’t have the requisite skills to hold the position. Have your resignation on my desk by end of day.
A new program to replace Twitter/X? Yes, dumb, dumb, dumb times two (to double down)!!! The city of Ottawa is now going to enter the software manufacturing sector? First off, the new application must be written (and given a fancy name), users must be taught how it works, all entries on the platform must be backed up (additional $$$ for cloud storage), bugs have to be fixed, updates must be made available every six (?) months or so. Even if you hate fElon Musk you can see why he’s been brought on board. To stifle dumb ideas like this.
Is it that they actually have nothing to do or that they like to indulge in these sorts of things as distractions to keep residents’ attention diverted from the issues that really matter?
So, are you saying X is irreplaceable? Would council have to reinvent the wheel? I see a number of sites where Bluesky has replaced it. Must we not only put more money in Musk’s treasury, but give him access to all the city’s secrets?
Merrill, what I am trying to say is that the city should communicate to its target market (residents et al of Ottawa) on as many channels as possible. X, Bluesky, Facebook, radio, news services – including The Bulldog. A multitude of channels because the target market is spread across multiple channels.
Exiting X as a virtue signal of some people’s disapproval of fElon Musk (copyright acknowledgement to sisco) is counterproductive to being an effective communicator.