Why I’m Trying New Social Media Apps Like Gist

Life

Aug 27

Written By Michele Edington (formerly Michele Gargiulo)

I think some of us have developed a slightly unhealthy relationship with Instagram. I’m not trying to call anyone out there out about it, I too have to set a timer on mine so I don’t over do it, but come on. I see people still buying followers on there even though it feels like it’s mostly bots at this point in time, and I don’t know anyone who actually makes much money off it either.

We complain about it constantly is the thing about it too. We talk about how our reach is down, how nobody sees our posts anymore, how Reels barely move, how the algorithm apparently wants us to sacrifice a goat under a full moon while using trending audio at exactly 7:42 PM or no one will see anything that we post.

…Then we wake up the next morning and post on Instagram again.

I’m guilty of it too. I’ve spent years building various projects online, writing articles, creating websites, posting photos, making videos and trying to figure out what the internet wants from me at any given moment. Instagram used to feel like one of the obvious places where that work could find people, but lately growth has been so horrible, I swear it feels impossible.

Apparently I’m not imagining it either. Buffer analyzed more than 52 million social media posts for its 2026 engagement report and found Instagram’s median engagement rate dropped about 26% from 2024 to 2025. Interestingly, Pinterest and Facebook actually improved slightly during the same period. If I look at Mediavine and at my ads, I see Instagram doesn’t even show up in my stats, while Pinterest makes me $32.12 from all the visitors.

That got me thinking about something I probably should have figured out a long time ago.

Why are we all fighting so hard for scraps of attention on platforms that are already completely saturated when there are new social media platforms opening all the time?

Especially when being early might be one of the biggest advantages the internet can give you.

We Treat the Big Social Media Apps Like They’re Permanent

Instagram feels permanent because it has been part of our lives for so long. I think I’ve had one for over a decade, which in and of itself, is kinda scary. Facebook feels permanent for sure, although, I can actually see growth and stuff working on there these days. YouTube practically feels like electricity at this point, but social media has never actually worked that way or started off like that.

MySpace once looked unstoppable while Facebook was once the weird website college kids used. Instagram was once a tiny photo-sharing app where everyone posted heavily filtered pictures of coffee and sunsets. I know because I still have those pictures on mine if you scroll back enough (please don’t though, no one needs to see that).

TikTok was Musical.ly before it became the center of internet culture thanks to COVID. Every enormous platform started as the app someone else rolled their eyes at, and that’s the part I think we forget.

By the time something becomes culturally unavoidable, the easiest growth period is usually already behind us.

Millions of creators are out there competing for the same eyeballs. Businesses have entire social media departments and influencers have professional photographers, editors, strategists and agencies. Brands are spending millions of dollars figuring out how to squeeze themselves between your friend’s wedding pictures and a video of a raccoon stealing cat food from the back of a pickup truck.

Then I’m over here posting a picture and wondering why 47 people saw it.

Of course it’s hard when we showed up to a party after everybody else arrived.

I recently started using a newer social media app called Gist (my referral code is in this link, by the way, we’ll both get $5 if you use it!), and I was surprised by how much I liked it.

Gist is currently in open beta and describes itself as “slow social for the curious and intentional.” Instead of building everything around an endless stream of full-screen videos, its feed is made up of multiple cards you can browse and choose from based on what actually catches your interest. It has recommendations, conversations, local finds, photos, videos and even longer articles built directly into the platform.

The easiest way I can describe it is this: it feels a little like Pinterest if Pinterest actually talked back to you. I mean that as a huge compliment. I already love Pinterest because it lets curiosity lead. You can look at gardening, science, recipes, travel, wine, interior design and whatever strange rabbit hole your brain decides it needs to crawl into that afternoon. I also sort of like that I don’t get a lot of comments on Pinterest, because responding to them all might take me forever (I get around 600,000 impressions per 28 days on there at the moment).

Gist has some of that same visual browsing feeling though that I really like. You’re looking at several pieces of content instead of having one Reel aggressively take over your entire screen, and if something looks interesting, you click it. Very revolutionary stuff apparently…letting people decide what they want to look at.

The biggest difference I’ve noticed so far is engagement because people actually respond and comment and interact with my stuff. They seem curious and everyone has been kind and polite instead of that rude shit that TikTok is on. You don’t feel quite as much like you’re tossing content into a giant digital garbage disposal and hoping the algorithm accidentally spits it in front of a real person.

Obviously, Gist is new and that matters enormously here. Smaller platforms naturally have different community dynamics than networks containing billions of people, but that’s also exactly why I’m interested.

Gist Has a Surprisingly Interesting Backstory

The fun thing about this app is that Gist isn’t being built by a couple of random people in a garage hoping somebody notices it. It’s not some small company hoping that things will take off, the app comes from AppLovin, one of the largest mobile advertising technology companies in the world.

This is where the story gets interesting.

AppLovin reportedly made an attempt to buy TikTok during the whole bizarre TikTok ownership saga. That didn’t happen, but they weren’t exactly window shopping. The company was worth around $100 billion at the time and was reportedly talking to billionaire Steve Wynn about helping back the deal.

So apparently they decided to build their own social platform instead after not being able to acquire that lovely platform that I hate the most. Honestly, I respect the commitment to the bit.

Gist quietly appeared in May 2026 and early versions were referral-based, and AppLovin began recruiting creators to help populate the platform. Reports at the time described it as something between Pinterest, Lemon8, RedNote and TikTok, with photo posts, videos, articles, recommendations, games and interest-based discovery. This is interesting to me because they really want to make sure they have things right before they go big and public.

Now it’s moved into open beta.

That backstory matters because AppLovin already understands something incredibly valuable: distribution. Its entire business has largely revolved around helping apps find users and helping advertisers reach people. Of course, whether Gist becomes enormous is impossible to know. Social media graveyards are filled with apps people once swore would become “the next Instagram.”

I remember Clubhouse. Do you remember Clubhouse? For approximately twelve minutes everyone acted like we were going to spend the rest of our lives sitting in digital conference rooms listening to strangers talk, then the internet moved on.

No, downloading a new app doesn’t mean you’ve found the next billion-dollar social network, but it also doesn’t not mean that.

Being Early Is Its Own Kind of Advantage

Imagine joining Instagram in 2011 and consistently posting good content. I’ve literally daydreamed about getting on TikTok before every company, celebrity, restaurant, fitness coach, realtor, dentist and golden retriever had a content strategy and not having to work anymore because of it.

Back then you weren’t competing against the internet yet…you were helping build it. That’s a completely different position because when a social media platform is young, there are just fewer people fighting for attention. If 10,000 people are creating content about food instead of 10 million, your chances of becoming recognizable are dramatically different in the way you want it to be.

There are fewer established giants out there and fewer enormous accounts absorbing attention. Currently there are less people who have already claimed every possible niche on Gist, and importantly, the platform itself needs creators.

Instagram doesn’t need me as sad as that is to say. Instagram will survive tomorrow if @sommslayer never posts another tomato from her garden again, but a young platform is in a different position. It needs people posting, conversations buzzing, and it needs interesting communities to pop up inside of it.

New platforms need users inviting other users and people experimenting with whatever weird little tools it just built.

That can create opportunities that disappear later in a tsunami of creators pouring in.

I’m not only talking about Gist here either. I got my husband onto RedNote last week and he hit over 300 followers in days. RedNote is the version of TikTok that China is currently loving, and there aren’t a ton of Americans on there yet. I had to ask ChatGPT to translate some stuff for me so I knew what it said even, but it was worth it. As one of the few fitness Americans on there trying to become an actor, he’s now one of the very few instead one of the millions on Instagram and TikTok, and boy, does that make a difference.

Find an app to stand out in, not get devoured by a sea of sameness.

You Get to Grow With the Platform

There’s another reason I think joining early matters to any app or field. You learn the culture while the culture is still being created and even have a hand in creating it. Think about how complicated established platforms have become. Every platform has these damn invisible rules now.

You need hooks and specific dimensions, the perfect trending sounds, keywords or hashtags then watch times need to be a certain amount, shares matter, saves make a difference, comments are golden and everyone has a posting schedule they swear by.

Apparently you need to say certain words and avoid other words because the algorithm might decide you have committed some mysterious digital crime and suddenly you’re shadow-banned.

It’s exhausting and annoying and absolutely infuriating. New platforms haven’t fully calcified yet though and people are still figuring out what works. The company is still changing features while the audience is still deciding what kind of content belongs there.

You might actually help shape the future culture than joining one that’s already there. To me, that’s much more interesting.

Social media growth also isn’t completely linear. Your first 100 genuinely interested followers can be much more important than they look as some of those people become your earliest regular readers. When they comment, share your work, or introduce you to other people, you start recognizing usernames. People start recognizing you and then when, if the platform grows, you already have history there.

You aren’t arriving as account number 84,729,281 trying to convince everybody you exist.

You were there already. That doesn’t guarantee success because nothing on the internet does, but I think of it almost like buying yourself a very cheap lottery ticket where the price isn’t really money, it’s attention.

Maybe I spend fifteen minutes posting something on Gist and Gist disappears someday. Okay, great. I have definitely wasted fifteen minutes doing less productive things. I once watched a woman restore a Victorian staircase on TikTok for what felt like an entire afternoon and I don’t even own a Victorian staircase.

It’a also possible that the platform grows though, and something I start building there now becomes meaningful two years from now. That possibility is worth experimenting with I think.

The Internet Is Still Young

Sometimes I think we talk about the internet as though everything important has already been built.

Google won search while Instagram won pictures and TikTok won videos (or did YouTube win videos?). Amazon won shopping for sure though, so everybody go home now.

I don’t believe that though. The internet is still changing absurdly fast. AI is changing how we search today, much to the dismay of all the bloggers like me out there. (Google, if you’re reading this, just know my blog is wonderful and you want to put it in the top 3 searches for everything for all of time, thank you).

Social networks are fragmenting and people are tired of feeds filled with content engineered entirely around grabbing attention. Long-form writing is also popping up in places we assumed would only want 15-second videos. Even Gist is leaning directly into this idea by describing itself as slower, more substantive social media, with longer articles and thoughtful discussions built right alongside ordinary posts.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but eventually, something will.

There will be another major social platform someday…probably several. When that happens, somebody is going to be sitting there with 300,000 followers because they started posting when the rest of us were saying: “eh, nobody uses that app.” That’s the part I don’t want to forget anymore.

Stop Waiting for the Old Algorithm to Love You Back

There’s something strangely demoralizing about creating something you’re proud of and watching it receive almost no distribution. Eventually you start wondering whether the work itself is the problem and thinking that nobody cares or that you’re boring. Some days it feels like everybody else just understands social media better than you do.

Or maybe you’re publishing into one of the most competitive attention markets humanity has ever created.

That seems worth considering too in your bad days. Trying a new platform doesn’t mean chasing every shiny object the internet throws at you, but it means remembering that Instagram is a website and that isn’t the entire internet.

The internet is much bigger, stranger and more unpredictable than whichever five apps happen to be sitting on our home screen right now. So I’m going to keep trying the new ones and report back to you guys every once in a while. Right now, Gist is the one I’m having fun with while Zak plays with RedNote and people he can barely communicate with.

I’m curious to see what happens as more people arrive. It’s very possible that this article becomes a hilarious artifact documenting an app nobody remembers one day, and either outcome is kind of interesting.

If the next giant social platform is being built somewhere right now, I would rather wander in while they’re still putting up the furniture than spend another five years standing outside Instagram knocking on the door.

Oh, and if you want to try it yourself, here’s my referral code where we both get $5 if we post on there. Also, follow me and I’ll follow you back!!