From walled garden to POSSE

Every day, we are processing and producing information. On average, a human processes around 74 GB(link) of information per day: emails, chats, social media, books, videos.
And most of this information is happening in walled gardens like social platforms (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Mastodon, Bluesky, YouTube), book ecosystems like Amazon’s Kindle, Google’s Books or Barnes and Noble, ad ecosystems, and video platforms like YouTube, Netflix, or Apple.
As people spend, on average, 141 minutes per day on social platforms, it’s necessary to understand what a walled garden is, how to interact with and create for each one, and, in the end, how to take control of your content and audience.

What is a walled garden?

A walled garden, or closed ecosystem, is a term for a closed environment that restricts access to a range of applications, systems, audiences, or data. It is used by marketing professionals and technology people.
John Malone, the founder of Tele-Communication Inc., has been credited with coining the term.

They are used for different motives that can coexist at the same time. For example, a walled garden will offer cybersecurity, while at the same time, will give selected paying customers access to users’ data and engagement patterns.

Examples of walled gardens

Most of the closed ecosystems have similar elements when it comes to infrastructure, revenue model or reach, but we can categorise them based on their audience focus.

The most common example of walled gardens is the social platforms. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok get their profit from ad revenues, so they attract users and weaponise their algorithms to keep them engaged. External links are discouraged and taxed by the system.

Their collaboration with ad systems, like Google Ads, Bing, or Facebook Ads, creates a ton of personalised data for each user.

Another example is the hardware and software manufacturers. Here, Apple is the most successful. Their hardware and software are created to work best together, while connecting external devices can be cumbersome. Microsoft tried to replicate the Apple model, but mostly failed. They bought Nokia to launch a Windows phone, but the phones didn’t have a large adoption, and the venture died. They have their Surface line of products (tablet, laptop, desk computer), but we can say they don’t have a large adoption. We don’t know exact sales numbers because Microsoft, in its reporting, bundles together the Windows licensing, devices, and gaming.

We can include the gaming consoles in the walled gardens category because they follow similar lines: games launched on Switch cannot be played on other consoles, and vice versa.

Another big category of walled gardens is the software and collaboration segment. Think about Microsoft Office, Slack, or Atlassian. Even if they have options to connect to other services or use open formats, this openness is not fully realised.

What is POSSE?

POSSE, which is an abbreviation of Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere, is the practice of posting on your own site and then sharing or linking to other platforms. The idea is to have your website as the main Source of Truth, and use social media sites, aggregators, and newsletters as disseminators of the original.
The advantages of POSSE are: ownership of the data, better ranking and discoverability, and long-term accessibility to content.

How to create a content strategy for walled gardens and POSSE

In most scenarios, be it a product, a company blog, or a creator account, the plan should cover both strategies. Even if POSSE is associated with the indie web, the POSSE strategy can be applied to everyone.

To create a good strategy, first you’ll need to understand the systems you are working with. Meaning understanding platforms technical limitations, how it’s optimised for engagement and revenue, and how the content moderation is done.

Let’s look at three guidelines when creating a content strategy.

1. Use platform-native formats

When strategising, take into consideration the type of content you want to make, the skill you’ll need, and the time you can allocate for it.
It doesn’t make sense to have a highly edited video if time is a problem or you are working with perishable content, like politics, news, or consumer goods. You can use native features, like carousels and stories to appear in the feeds, present your work, and direct users to a medium or platform that makes more sense for your type of content. Also, be conscious about custom rules on platforms, like not posting images directly to Reddit (it’s recommended to host them on an image sharing service) or not adding alt text to images on Mastodon. Look at these walled gardens as a distribution channel, rather than a first-class place for your content.

2. Transform your audience into a community

You have followers and likes. What now? You start building a community. Easier said than done, because genuine connection doesn’t happen on a FOMO engineered app.
And here is where the POSSE concept can help. By having a website, with a newsletter, a chat group, or a forum, you can control:

• Who will get in (the added friction to jump from a walled garden to your digital home, makes that person invested)

• What content do you have (think about member-only content, like private chats, behind the scenes, Ask Me Anything)

• And you can involve the people in future decisions regarding the community or your content creation directions. (Only if you want.)

3. Trends and authenticity

That high from a viral post or comment can be intoxicating. But look at it from another angle: did it bring new subscribers, did it spark new conversations? Or was it just a blip in the numbers and got buried in the trends?
I’m not saying not to follow trends or viral moments. Sometimes these moments will happen spontaneously. But if you focus on your strategy and stay consistent, in the long term, you’ll be more satisfied and get results.

Conclusion

In our fragmented digital landscape, having a strategy based on POSSE is a must. A strategy that is focused on authenticity, quality, and people is the way to stand out in an AI slop feed and be the base for a genuine community.