This is, once again, a scheduled post. If everything went according to plan, I should be enjoying the somewhat warmer weather in Greece at the time this post goes live 
Nevertheless, work continued in my slightly shorter week 40, so here’s the update:
Most notably, we had a rare real-world meeting of all simulogics employees at HQ (aka: my place) once again. This has been long overdue and we spent a whole day talking mostly about matters of business. It’s hard to believe, but our “new” game Prosperous Universe is turning 10 years old this fall. How we’re going to deal with this fact was one of the items we discussed. But also more general things like “where do we want to take the company and its projects?” and “how do we plan to get there?”. You know…business stuff.
Another business’y topic was that of “social media”. Frankly, “classic” social media feels pretty much dead. Facebook is a shadow of its former self, Twitter is unrecognizable after its hostile takeover and rebrand into X, other platforms in the space never gained any level of relevance. Newer contestants like Mastodon, BlueSky or Threads still need to show whether they’ll be able to catch any noteworthy amount of marketshare. And these days, everything seems to be about pretty pictures and short videos anyway, with Instagram, TikTok and YouTube (Shorts) arguably being the most important places to be at.
Obviously, we’re having a hard time with this paradigm shift. Simply because AirlineSim (and Prosperous Universe, for that matter) just doesn’t lend itself well to channels heavy on visuals. But we also don’t want to give up on those platforms completely either. While we don’t have massive reach and don’t actively support any of them beyond sharing our occasional news post, we at least want to make sure our brand names are “secured” and that whatever algorithm is at work sees the connection to our products.
So before I wrapped up my last week before vacation (and after I relaunched Junkers), I started looking into this whole subject. I didn’t get too far in the world of Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp) just yet because their backends show a disturbing level of deterioration. But creating accounts on BlueSky was refreshingly simpel and - best of all - I was able to set up DNS-verified handles for each one of them, just as the ATProtocol the network is based on recommends. For purely technical and idealistic reasons, BlueSky is easily my favorite network at the moment. Even though I’m afraid it won’t really make any commercial difference for a long time to come. Anyway…thanks to @molp for dropping me into this rabbit hole 
If you want to have a look, you can find and follow AirlineSim on BlueSky. And just for good measure, AirlineSim also has an Instagram account now, so if that’s down your alley, here you go. Same goes for simulogics…BlueSky and Instagram (don’t expect a lot to be going on on either).
I’ll look into additional channels once I am back. Maybe even LinkedIn…brrrrr.
And with that, my Thursday-in-week-40 signs off to go on vacation! See you!