End of the Twitter party

I’ve men­tioned on my blog pre­vi­ous­ly that I used to be a heavy Twit­ter user. I joined in 2007, and it became one of my favorite places to spend time online. Twit­ter gave me a feel­ing of com­mu­ni­ty. From nerds to news to real-life friends, my feed was fan­tas­tic. That began to change after Musk bought it. Over time, Twit­ter became increas­ing­ly unrec­og­niz­able, and I want­ed to leave but didn’t know where to go.

Musk’s changes made leav­ing eas­i­er, but those changes were incre­men­tal. For a while, I found glimpses of old Twit­ter and stuck around as an active user for a few months, but as of late 2024, the things I enjoyed about Twit­ter are either gone or drowned out by the neg­a­tive things on the plat­form.

Although I did­n’t record the date I changed the set­tings on my Twit­ter pro­file, I’ve kept my account active but pri­vate and unused for near­ly two years. At some point, I also delet­ed all my old posts. I did not delete my account because I had some hope that Twit­ter would some­how trans­form back into what it once was. Yes­ter­day, I final­ly acknowl­edged that this change won’t hap­pen, so I pulled the plug com­plete­ly. The account I had for 17 years will be delet­ed entire­ly after the 30-day win­dow imposed by Twit­ter. 

What comes next?

Facebook and Instagram

Let’s get the obvi­ous options out of the way first. Face­book and Insta­gram are viable options for many peo­ple. I’m not a big user of either. I check them occa­sion­al­ly, but nei­ther is where I spend my time.

LinkedIn

If LinkedIn works for you, please enjoy that. Maybe you’ll find a valu­able busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase the val­ue of your per­son­al brand. That is not what I’m look­ing for. LinkedIn is not a Twit­ter replace­ment.

Mastodon

My first gen­uine attempt at leav­ing Twit­ter was Mastodon. I tried two dif­fer­ent pub­lic servers. The first serv­er changed own­er­ship and became unre­li­able, lead­ing to my cur­rent serv­er at Mastodon Social. I tried to fall in love with Mastodon, but it did­n’t work. You can’t engi­neer love, I guess. I appre­ci­ate what Mastodon is try­ing to be, but set­ting up an account has too much men­tal over­head for most peo­ple, which will always lim­it the breadth of the com­mu­ni­ty.

Using Mastodon made me feel like I was at the wrong par­ty. I rec­og­nized a few peo­ple and had some good moments but did­n’t click in this room. Maybe you’ve been at that par­ty before, sip­ping your drink, think­ing your friends bet­ter show up soon, or you’re going home. I still have a Mastodon account and try to check it reg­u­lar­ly, but Mastodon does­n’t feel like the right fit for me.

Discord

I use Dis­cord, but it does­n’t feel like Twit­ter. I belong to 22 dif­fer­ent servers in Dis­cord. Twen­ty-two is not a typo. Each serv­er is a silo of peo­ple and con­ver­sa­tion. Maybe it’s the lack of cross-pol­li­na­tion, but Dis­cord is not a replace­ment for my old Twit­ter expe­ri­ence. 

Threads

When Threads came along, I was hun­gry to try it. The buzz around it was that it was a Twit­ter killer. Short, pithy bursts of text from peo­ple you fol­low. Sign me up. I cre­at­ed my account with­in the first hours the ser­vice was pub­lic. While Threads is not the same as old Twit­ter, it has worked rea­son­ably well as a sub­sti­tute. I do enjoy Threads.

Threads is like being at a par­ty with you and your friends in your par­en­t’s base­ment instead of being at a par­ty in your dorm room at col­lege. By that, I mean if things got too row­dy, your par­ents might come down the stairs any­time to inter­rupt your Threads par­ty.

BlueSky

As soon as I got an invite to the beta, I cre­at­ed my BlueSky account. There were few­er users than either Threads or Twit­ter, but I liked what I saw. I noticed quite a few famil­iar user­names and thumb­nails. Was every­one there? No, not by a long shot, but BlueSky felt fun. There was also a sense of free­dom to what was going on there. To reuse the par­ty-in-your-par­ents base­ment anal­o­gy, Mom and Dad are not wait­ing at the top of the stairs to keep things in line. The peo­ple at this par­ty were the ones dic­tat­ing the vibe. Also, with the feeds fea­ture of BlueSky, it felt like many small­er par­ties were going on all the time. A BlueSky feed is sort of like fol­low­ing a hash­tag.

I’m enjoy­ing the surge in users who have joined BlueSky since the Novem­ber 2024 US elec­tion. It is the clos­est I’ve expe­ri­enced to my ear­ly mem­o­ries of using Twit­ter. It can be messy, irrev­er­ent, and sur­pris­ing. 

Fractured social media life

I now try to ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tions on my three accounts: Mastodon, Threads, and BlueSky. I’m using the Crois­sant App, an iOS app that lets you cross­post to these accounts. That way, I can engage with peo­ple wher­ev­er they are — unless they hap­pen to be on Twit­ter. My expe­ri­ence is only a tiny sam­pling, but I have found the most engage­ment on BlueSky. 

I don’t expect any­thing to repli­cate old Twit­ter. That party’s over. Par­ty on.