Once Space Karen got hold of the Twitter reins, things were never going to be great. It’s not like we didn’t see it coming. But now he’s hammering nails into nails that were already in the coffin.
Some of them are very clearly penetrating the corpse. It’s leaking. Eww.
Shutting down Tweetdeck is a big loss for me, and the requirement to pay for so many features just isn’t happening. I have no issue paying for a good quality service – I pay for plenty of them on the internet – but that’s not what Twitter is anymore.
And yet, I don’t really want to leave: it feels like deserting an old friend (it’s been over 14 years!). But that old friend has become unruly, unpleasant and abusive, and isn’t nice to be around. And so you’ll definitely see (even) less of me on there from now on.
So, where are we going to go and play instead? Well, there are few issues with that. Firstly, that there aren’t many good choices: although there are plenty of mediocre ones. And you need one to stand out from the crowd because you need a critical mass of users to make it function and be useful – for it to work well – in the way that Twitter did all those years ago.
Nothing has stuck its head above that parapet… yet.
And so I have profiles at a couple of places – you can see all my socials at the top of the sidebar up there [indicates upwards and right]. But right now, I’m throwing my weight behind Spoutible.
Find my profile there… er… here.
It seems the best option with lots of the good twitter features, and fewer of the bad ones. And it also seems to take a lot of user feedback and suggestions into account when adding stuff. It also has some pretty strict rules about abuse, harassment etc. So if you think that’s likely to infringe on your right to “free speech”, then maybe it isn’t for you.
Shame.
It looks promising. But it needs to be bigger before it will work properly, and so if it doesn’t make that critical mass I mentioned above, then it won’t fly. If that’s the case, it will hopefully be because something equally good (or better) has made it.
Anyway, I’m lucky enough to have this place [indicates general blog space] so that I can at least tell people where I’m going to be if Spoutible doesn’t work out. So please keep coming back here even when we’ve all left the hellsite that twitter has become. After all, everyone needs to regularly visit at least one hellsite, just so you can be reminded of how good the rest of the internet is.
And if it’s not the Loud Mouth Space Wanker’s place, then it might as well be here.
So. This isn’t a complete farewell, but it is a definite move to set up home elsewhere.
I look forward to you popping in for coffee soon.
