Plazi on Twitter
First post
On July 29, 2021, @plazi_species started on Twitter with the very first tweet; Caridina namdat - a freshwater shrimp from Vietnam. The post received 0 likes and 0 retweets.
The idea behind this account was to showcase Plazi’s work to a wider audience through individual examples of newly discovered species whose treatments were integrated into Plazi’s TreatmentBank as FAIRdata. The first post to break the 100-likes mark was posted on November 2, 2021 and showed Parosphromenus juelinae, a beautiful freshwater fish from Indonesia.
Highlights on Twitter
Slowly but steadily, the number of followers increased and so did the number of interactions. The first big breakthrough came with Synapturanus danta, a brown frog that was quickly nicknamed the Choco Frog by the community because it was reminded of the chocolate frogs from Harry Potter. The post from February 22, 2022 has received 3651 likes and 1142 retweets to date and has been picked up by various media outlets.
New social media channels
The takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk on October 28, 2022 resulted in a noticeable exodus of followers. Plazi registered on Mastodon on November 4, 2022 and began publishing posts on this platform. Accounts on Instagram and Bluesky followed later.
Further highlights
It’s not the largest discoveries that get the biggest attention. The next highlight was a springtail from Brazil, barely recognizable to the naked eye, with a very comical appearance: Spaeridia piauiensis.
Following Donald Trump’s recent election victory in 2024, there was a further exodus of users from Twitter, which was also reflected in Plazi’s follower numbers. Curiously, however, the trend suddenly reversed on November 29, 2024. The post about Stenasellus stygopersicus, an isopod from Iran, was by far the most successful to date with almost 15,000 likes, over 3,800 retweets and 6,300,000 impressions! This post also led to a doubling of the number of followers to over 12,000.
How to proceed?
On the one hand, further successful posts followed on Twitter; on the other, its owner Elon Musk meets publicly with right-wing radicals, ruthlessly propagating a reinterpretation of historical events, abusing his power and reach to stir up irrational fears and actively intervening in election campaigns in various democratic states. Each point in itself is a reason to leave Twitter. Although it hurts a little to leave the network at the moment when the follower numbers have reached their zenith, we will do so in the foreseeable future. We will inform our Twitter community that we can still be found on Mastodon, Bluesky and Instagram and will try to establish a new network on these platforms.