After over 16 years, 36,600+ tweets, many connections / friends made, conversations / communities explored, good stuff curated and shared… I’m out!
For some time Twitter has been a bit of a turd.
A turd rolled in glitter.
Then Elon Musk was forced to buy it and decided to set it on fire.
So now it’s sparkly shit, in flames, stinking up the place…
I remember a time when it was an active community of humans adding value to each other (as when you tweeted people would see it, respond, share on etc).
It’s not anymore.
I remember when tweet-ups were a thing (literally tweeting out where you were going to be in a city or place or event and folks would join you from the virtual community to make themselves real).
It’s not anymore.
I remember when geo-location was available as a search criteria (as a way to connect into physical communities of practice and tracking some fun stuff).
It’s not anymore.
I remember when ‘Follow Fridays’ was a thing (celebrating people in your network for their efforts online and exposing them to your network for more follows).
It’s not anymore.
I remember when RSS feeds where available on profiles and even searches / hashtags (which allowed an opportunity to mash-up that data as research and insights or even as a way to curate clusters of people into fun groups).
It’s not anymore.
I remember when the platform had trust in its user base by showing just the tweets from people you were following (by the way if you want that, start a private list as sponsored tweets don’t appear in there when viewed and tweets are sorted by latest).
It’s not anymore.
I remember when Twitter was fun and allowed third party services like IFTTT to again curate and play with what’s being shared in interesting ways (I used to tweet quotes from Rilke and have them automatically curate to a Tumblr blog called ‘Missing Rilke‘).
It’s not anymore.
…the reason I stayed this long was due to the legacy echo of community and connection.
Alas, the algorithms, sponsors and shareholder return is all that matters now, along with a silly man in charge making sillier decisions (take your time).
My engagement (folks I talk to and who respond to my tweets) has flat lined to nearly zero these past few years. And just like with all my relationships, I need some parity of energy and effort to continue investing from my side.
Twitter will probably become one of the worst financial investment failures in modern history and all because one person thought he could do better than others for himself not the community as a whole (success in one arena does not equal mastery in another).
So I’m going back to things I can control. The stuff I used to advocate for when delivering new media training back in the day with my second company MediaSnackers. This blog (please do subscribe in the sidebra / footer or grab the RSS feed) will become the center point of future activities and my community (yes I’ve sniffed out Mastodon, Discord, BlueSky etc but I have no energy to build a new community elsewhere and dilute my offerings / energy further, plus I’m going to be busy for a while with my new job).
So thank you Twitter.
Thank you for connecting us to each other.
For allowing us to express ourselves.
To be heard in a loud world.
To be part of something, expansive.
It worked. For a while. Now it doesn’t:
