Thursday, November 24, 2022

Alternatives to Twitter

About five years ago, I moved most of my blogging from here to microblogging on Twitter.

In part that was from the shut down of Google Reader. In part I was finally giving in on the trend against long form blogging. So this blog has been pretty quiet for years.

The recent decline of Twitter has me looking for and trying alternatives.

One surprise I found is that Google News and TechMeme feel worth using more often. Both are surprisingly effective alternatives to social media. I am finding they have most of the value without much of the unpleasantness, although missing the contact with close friends.

I was also surprised to find I liked LinkedIn as a substitute for Twitter. I find most of the interactions to be fairly good there, though again missing some close friends.

So far, I have more mixed feelings about using Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, Post, or going back to blogging as alternatives. Anyone have anything else they like? Or differing experiences?

2 comments:

louisgray said...

Losing Google Reader (I had a front row seat) was dramatic. But I've been using Feedly for years and it remains how I read blogs, including yours.

I've opened accounts on Mastodon and Post. Mastodon seems most like a direct Twitter replacement. But the question remains -- why? Do we need a short message service? The world has voted that not all of us need to blog, and the engines that used to power discovery are muted.

I'd like to say I wish everyone would longform blog again -- but why? What we need are well-written informed unique voices with intriguing viewpoints, and maybe that just means fewer people creating long content. I'll still be using RSS until they kill it.

JoFr said...

Mastodon looks promising. I see you already have an account at https://sigmoid.social/@glinden