Changing social contours
The decline of Twitter and the search for new social media communities and connections.
Social - Communities - Connections
I am ashamed to admit that I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to set my socials on the Fedi-verse and Bluesky.
It’s already 2 months since I joined Bluesky. Mastodon happened last week. I jumped in because I just couldn’t put up with the shenanigans of The Night King ( Elon Musk or should I say “X” fanatic) anymore. The [character is from Game of Thrones] (https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Night_King) show.
I am still on Twitter. I go on to just check tweets of the people. No tweeting anymore.
It is a loss because I found my Twitter community to be where I went to learn a little, about everything. They pointed me to newer places, perspective and prospects that I wouldn’t have found elsewhere. It was my default social network of Personal Knowledge Mastery a term coined by Harold Jarche
PKM is a framework of practical methods to connect work and learning in the digital age. Perpetual beta is our new normal so we need to connect our social networks, communities of practice, and our work teams. We have to seek to understand our environment, seek & make sense of new ideas, make sense of practical experience, and share new practices — continuously.
Now, I am following the same people from Twitter anywhere they are posting. It has been a unnecessary and time taking process. Yet, I need to persist as it helps with updating my priors.
For instance, I got to know about passing of Land Leasing Act of Maharastra through a tweet of Mohit Satyanand. This news was supper relevant for me as I continue to read each chapter of “Down to earth” by Sharad Joshi where he talks about multiple policy goof ups that have been done in agriculture domain post independence. It is also adds an update to my previous post on “Making Agriculture Economical”.
It just makes me angry that one man caused so much discomfort to many people. Quite a few of them have spent more hours dissing the changes with Twitter and its rebrand than the Night King spent making the decision in the first place.
Like the many posts I have read declaring the death of Twitter. This one is filed from me for the internet archive.
Post Twitter Social Media
Combining the round up and links I read for this issue. Also, we are sticking to the theme of Twitter’s decline.
Goodbye Hellsite by Rachel Meager
Rachel shares her experience of using Twitter and what it got right. It was an unintended consequence of the algorithm which put a lot of people from the outside to peek inside.
Since I decided to eulogise twitter, I have to say shit like “A lot of outsiders in all fields got access to information and opportunities on twitter that they otherwise wouldn’t”. And that is true, and really good, but it feels weird to give them credit for it when I suspect this was entirely unintentional. ….. Twitter will probably lose much more market share then it has, but even if it doesn’t, the damage I think is now irreversible. The site is breaking and the alternatives are working well enough to substitute for it. Elon fucked it. I thought he wouldn’t because he also uses it— but rich men in echo chambers destroy what they love all the time.
On successor states and websites
In this post Dr. Eleanor Janega who studies medieval history uses the decline of Twitter to explain the decline of Roman Empire.
This month, like everyone online, I have been watching with a mixture of chagrin and schaudenfruede as platform capitalism digs itself into ever more complex and narrow burrows. By this I mean it’s really funny how a bunch of very rich dudes are breaking stuff online and making worse versions of existing products in response to said breakage. Obviously it is quite amusing to be shown how stupid rich people are, and I very much enjoy it. However, it is also useful for my purposes as a medieval historian in that it serves as a really excellent way of explaining to people what happened in the early medieval period. …
She concludes with lessons we could glean from Rome’s decline. It can help us think about what next for communications systems of social media.
With X, it is Twitter R.I.P!
OM was one of the earliest users of Twitter was the person who understood it much better than most.
As someone who sent out the first tweet (outside of the Twitter team), I have followed the company as closely as anyone. One thing I have understood about the company is that it is hard to understand. It doesn’t matter who you are — its founders, managers, new owner, or media members — the company and the idea refuse to be classified and tamed. When the company went public about a decade ago, I tried to summarize Twitter:
Twitter, at its very core, is many things to many people: that is its beauty and that is its challenge. Twitter the idea and the product is ever evolving, and so is the company, which was and still is a work in progress. Twitter is unique because it was born in the crucible of failure and grew up in the glare of the spotlight. ……
I read OM’s commentary because of his understanding on media landscape. Journalists were one section of power users on Twitter. Luke Winkie talks to fellow Twitter users about the resetting taking place.
The Great Clout Reset
Did talent and ability truly correspond to the Following tab? Ask any editor, and they’ll tell you the answer is no. The far more likely scenario is that Twitter rewarded a ton of smart, gracious, inventive people, but it was also a wild animal—bequeathing huge amounts of influence at random, ensuring that everyone invested in it was forever playing a rigged game. In that sense, we’re probably better off if the stranglehold that social media has on the creative industries is loosened. Twitter ought to be for posting
Where will I foster
At the moment, I am unsure. The final answer would be wherever the community settles.
If you like to follow me on these new social media spaces. You can be my first follower on Mastodon or you could join Bluesky (I have a 2 invites. Mail me, I will send them to you.)
Communities and systems powering them have to be sustaining. Currently, none have an answer to that one question. Advertising was the default up until now. What will come next is worth pondering.
Also, I liked what Juila Evan’s did with all her tweets. If you can help, I would love to do the same as well.
Last point, I didn’t talk about Threads much because I absolutely hate social apps managed by Meta or Facebook. If the world moves to Threads. I am happy to live as a hermit and write at vsvivek.in
Signing off till the next time,
Vivek, Posting into social voids.