When I was getting my doctorate in plant sciences, my advisor campaigned to have me create a twitter account. In my field, twitter had become the de facto medium for disseminating scientific results, offering open peer review, networking with collaborators, and job searching. It side-lined journals, conferences, professional societies, and the department listserv. It was all-in-one. Not all scientific fields use twitter like the plant scientists do, but for us its the only place. My "professional networking" activities that are part of my job were cultivating an audience on twitter. A collapse of the community there would be a loss of my professional network. I don't know what I'm going to do.
My path to Twitter was not the same as yours. Yet, yours and mine rhyme so well ^-^.
P.W. Singer book "LikeWar: the weaponization of social media" is a good reference of the change that happened.
In the end, things change anyway. And we just adapt, improvise, and overcome. LIke you, with this site ^-^. So, thanks for keep sharing your thoughts. Keep them coming ^-^.
Great piece thank you. Twitter was the place we could tell Chris Cuomo he was wrong and he would answer. Felt like posting opinions and pushing back was constructive in our national dialogue with media. I was wrong. It was an illusion. The engagement was the goal. Our attention and grief monetized. Now another deeply weird and bullying billionaire wants my attention to line his pockets? No thank you. Mastodon has been a good experience so far. The lack of algorithms is helping my brain detox. And you are absolutely right about quote tweeting. Glad Mastodon doesn’t allow it.
I've been dithering about the IT world since the late 80's and have seen my fair share of websites come and go. In my experience one sign of troubled waters is when the discourse revolves around the site itself. i.e: you want people talking *on* the site, not *about* the site, which seem to be the new meta over at birdland.
Nicely put, it manifests my feelings about it. I joined Twitter back in 2013 specifically to converse with the 2-dozen or so fellow participants in RetroChallenge https://www.retrochallenge.org/p/retrochallenge-rules.html . A lovely experience in a small community. Then I let my Twitter usage expand into interacting with the wider world (much of which is fine, but much not), which is something I now regret.
When I was getting my doctorate in plant sciences, my advisor campaigned to have me create a twitter account. In my field, twitter had become the de facto medium for disseminating scientific results, offering open peer review, networking with collaborators, and job searching. It side-lined journals, conferences, professional societies, and the department listserv. It was all-in-one. Not all scientific fields use twitter like the plant scientists do, but for us its the only place. My "professional networking" activities that are part of my job were cultivating an audience on twitter. A collapse of the community there would be a loss of my professional network. I don't know what I'm going to do.
Great article - convinced me to subscribe, and I'm not really sure what you even write about.
Thanks for this, Matt. Glad I subscribed.
My path to Twitter was not the same as yours. Yet, yours and mine rhyme so well ^-^.
P.W. Singer book "LikeWar: the weaponization of social media" is a good reference of the change that happened.
In the end, things change anyway. And we just adapt, improvise, and overcome. LIke you, with this site ^-^. So, thanks for keep sharing your thoughts. Keep them coming ^-^.
Great piece thank you. Twitter was the place we could tell Chris Cuomo he was wrong and he would answer. Felt like posting opinions and pushing back was constructive in our national dialogue with media. I was wrong. It was an illusion. The engagement was the goal. Our attention and grief monetized. Now another deeply weird and bullying billionaire wants my attention to line his pockets? No thank you. Mastodon has been a good experience so far. The lack of algorithms is helping my brain detox. And you are absolutely right about quote tweeting. Glad Mastodon doesn’t allow it.
I've been dithering about the IT world since the late 80's and have seen my fair share of websites come and go. In my experience one sign of troubled waters is when the discourse revolves around the site itself. i.e: you want people talking *on* the site, not *about* the site, which seem to be the new meta over at birdland.
Nicely put, it manifests my feelings about it. I joined Twitter back in 2013 specifically to converse with the 2-dozen or so fellow participants in RetroChallenge https://www.retrochallenge.org/p/retrochallenge-rules.html . A lovely experience in a small community. Then I let my Twitter usage expand into interacting with the wider world (much of which is fine, but much not), which is something I now regret.
I knew antisocial Elon would fail badly in social media but the Twitter death spiral is still stunning. https://samray.substack.com/p/the-grooming-of-elon-musk-a-psychological-139
Recommend you read this thread on moving a community to mastodon:
https://twitter.com/d_brueckner/status/1587760601559961600?s=46&t=VfY3j5nnceYDmSyCgeibmA