And I’m shifting along with it.
Elon Musk has bought Twitter. Or done something high-finance that’s functionally the same as buying it. I read, on Twitter, people yapping about how, financially, this move is (generously) complex, or (more commonly) a mess. In any event, a lot of people I follow are getting ready to seal up their birdhouse, and move on to something else, and Musk is trying to make people believe the idea that paying for Twitter verification is a thing that makes the site both more open and more (eventually, again, after a brief period ever for the first time this year) profitable.
Whatever. I follow just over 500 accounts, some of them art bots, some of them government offices, but mostly people who are either lefty-wingy, or role-playing game-y, or both. On the other side of the Twitter engagement equation, I have around 200 followers. Every couple of months I scroll through both lists to make sure things are, by and large, how I want them.
I am a small fish on any platform, by any metric.
So. Musk owns Twitter, and people are prepping to skedaddle. What’s my social media plan for late 2022 & beyond?
First: I deactivated my FB so long ago that I’m unsure when I did it. Every few weeks I consider returning, even though from what I hear it’s still an outrage engine, and I’m not likely to enjoy using it. So why? Well… I have a couple of Pages there that I sort of would like to add some stuff to on an on-going (if not exactly regular) basis. But, so far, I haven’t wanted to enough to risk the quagmire.
Twitter. I plan to keep it for now. If I notice that most of what I enjoy there has migrated to one of the other platforms I currently use (of is some new platform rises from the foam), I might use it ever less. Or if the unpleasantness overwhelms even my aggressive curation, I’ll probably bag it.
Tumblr. I’ve had this account for years, and mostly use it for looking at cool science fiction picture, weird early 20th century greeting cards, and to see what Wil Wheaton is interested in today, because I think he’s a good human to see what he’s interested in. I’m not sure how people interacting with each other actually works on the site. I use both the ios app, and desktop (I like desktop better.)
Cohost!. This is a Twitter-like platform. It doesn’t have an ios app, so I mainly use it through Safari on my phone, or the desktop. It’s pretty easy to use.
Mastodon. This is also a Twitter-like platform, as least so far as the interface goes. It does have an ios app, so that’s something. Mastodon is part of an internet movement called federated interoperability (or something like that). The basic idea is that, as a user, you can move around on various platforms in the interlinked federation of sites and services, taking your content and contacts with you. You can drop a service, pick one up, and your digital stuff is yours, rather than the platforms. It’s an interesting promise, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it actually works out. In any event, for the moment, Mastodon–for me–is just another site where I can post my usual nonsense.
Here. My blog on my site, hosted and DNS-ed by WordPress. I’ve always felt like there was more this service is capable of than I use it for. The social media tumult might get me to explore that a bit more.
The newsletter. I started the newsletter as a way to keep in touch with my FB people when I first started noodling around with the idea of departing that space. I haven’t been very good about sending things out. I see that the most recent one went out in late June. Sorry, y’all.
You can find me online at the link above, or the same link right here.
My plan? I plan to focus on each of the platforms in a daily rotation. It won’t be pure (I’ll probably check in with Twitter pretty much every day, for instance), but I plan to limit my original posts to that day’s platforms. (This place’s posts automatically feed out to Twitter and Tumblr, too. I’ll see if I can send to Cohost! and Mastodon automatically as well.) I’ll see if I can improve my newsletter mailings, too.
That’s the plan.
Grumble Flap 