Thoughts 3 — The end of Twitter?

published 2022-11-18 [ home ]

“Thoughts” are posts that relate to things that have been on my mind recently. Some are practical and some are just reflections on a given topic. They are less thought out than regular posts.

So, the Bird, of course. Not sure if or when it will collapse. Better safe than sorry so I am planning my retreat to the Pachyderm, but I do not really believe in the Fediverse model.

Eric said on Twitter - where he deletes his tweets so I won’t link it - that it might be time to bring back RSS/Atom feeds. I agree, especially since I finally found a feed reader I like. I know I won’t have the discipline to post as frequently as him, Karl or Rob, still that’s what those “Thoughts” posts were supposed to be for initially.

But feeds by themselves are not enough. The value is in the graph and the discovery that comes with it. I follow about 450 feeds, and you cannot see which ones. I won’t publish my raw OPML though. It’s not properly categorized so it wouldn’t be very useful anyway. It’s like my booklist, which I consider deprecating soon: too many items, not enough value.

Maybe the solution is to publish lists of links here from time to time like Daniel. You can also follow my Pinboard, which has feeds. Lobsters is great too.

Something else feeds don’t do is discussion / debate. But maybe that’s a good thing; I was growing tired of that aspect of Twitter lately. I think I prefer topic-specific spaces to social networks. I’m on a bunch of Slacks, Google Groups and mailing lists already. I liked forums but they’re out of fashion.

Oh, and for private messages, well… just send me an email, I guess.