Tag: twitter

  • How to help Mastodon

    There have been several waves of activity on Mastodon since I signed up in 2017. Those waves have increased in frequency and intensity. Admittedly, while I did put in some effort early on, I wasn’t really part of that first wave. I rode in on a much later wave in mid-2022 and haven’t looked back…

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  • Revisiting Simon Collison’s Farewell to Twitter

    Last night I revisited Simon Collison’s post from early December 2022 Farewell, Twitter. I had read it shortly after he published it and while I agreed with what he wrote, it didn’t hit me as hard as it did last night. Simon claims that “others have articulated the situation better”, however, last night I realized…

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  • Blogging is alive and well

    Oh man am I happy! People that hadn’t written on their blog in a long time are blogging again. Websites that hadn’t been updated in many years, some over a decade, are being spruced up and published to again. And popular news outlets are publishing articles about blogging. Of course, those of us that have…

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  • Disbanding the POSSE

    For the past several years I’ve been POSSE-ing. In Indieweb terms that means to publish content on my own site and syndicate it to other platforms. I’ve decided I’m going to discontinue using automation in favor of manually writing posts for each of the platforms I want to post to. I’m doing this for 3…

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  • Recent Mastodon vibes

    There is a lot being written about Mastodon lately. And it isn’t just being published on Mastodon. Both Time and Wired have published about Mastodon and its creator within the last week. I wanted to post my current thoughts about the platform to capture the moment. Things are changing rapidly. A lot of things are…

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  • What I saw somewhat recently #95: June 16, 2022

    It has been over a month since I posted a list of a links. I’ve been very busy lately. In some ways that’s good, in other ways not so good. But, do you know what is always good? Links!

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  • Like like – The pro way to browse Twitter

    Like like: A tool for wandering through Twitter. A pro tip that I often recommend for any social media platform is to browse through your followers likes. It is, in my opinion, one of the very best ways to find some of the best content. For instance: This tool, linked above, called Like like by…

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  • A short Twitter wish list

    OK, so Elon bought Twitter (subject to regulatory approval, of course). We can’t change what we can’t control. While I do not think it a great idea to have Elon be the sole owner of Twitter, is it any worse than Jack Dorsey or Ev Williams or anyone else for that matter? I suppose time…

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  • My social media bacta tank is working

    For context, you may want to read my post from early January I am quitting social media. There were two main actions I took when I decided to pull the plug on social media. First, I unsubscribed from all accounts in every platform. RSS feeds deleted. Twitter follows razed. Instagram follows flushed. YouTube subscriptions obliterated.…

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  • I am quitting social media

    Mostly. And, for a year. Or more. What started out as a routine flushing of my social media accounts, something I’ve done on more than one occasion in the past, has now turned into a strong desire to leave social media behind for good. And so I’m doing just that. My main reasons for waiting…

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  • Twitter’s project Bluesky seems stuck in the mud

    Yesterday I randomly wondered what the status of Twitter’s Bluesky project was – a project that promises to create a protocol for federating the microblogging platform in the same way that SMTP/IMAP does for email. So I poked around. The Twitter account seems all but dormant. So then I logged into their Discord guild (Discord…

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  • Bluesky

    Bluesky: We’re focusing on re-building the social web by connecting disconnected silos and returning control of the social experience to users. Our mission is to develop and drive the adoption of technologies for open and decentralized public conversation. A Twitter-backed organization to decentralize social media. It has been a slow start but the group had…

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  • What I saw somewhat recently #79: June 3, 2021

    Margarita painting session? Yes. I work 4-day work weeks. So with the holiday being Monday everything was compressed into 3 days. I’m not complaining. However, it has meant that my internet travels were lessened some.

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  • Mitch’s typical day

    Mitch, in his typical day post, regarding his 6:15am Twitter habit: This probably isn’t a great morning habit but four years of endless crises have pretty much drilled into me to take a glance at what’s going on in the world as soon as my eyes are open. Break the habit Mitch! Take drastic measures…

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  • Microsoft in talks to buy TikTok

    Microsoft: This new structure would build on the experience TikTok users currently love, while adding world-class security, privacy, and digital safety protections. The operating model for the service would be built to ensure transparency to users as well as appropriate security oversight by governments in these countries. I cannot tell if this is a bad…

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  • The Best of 2019 as told by me

    At the end of the year I like to sit down and make a rather random list of the “best” things I’ve seen that year. I do this almost entirely from memory but I also peruse my browser history and look through my Unmark archive in order to uncover some of the things I appreciated…

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  • Ryan Barrett switched to Twitter Lists

    Ryan Barrett: A few days ago, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter, added them all to a list, and I now read that list instead. It’s shockingly better. Only their own tweets and retweets, in order. No ads, no “liked by,” no “people you may know,” no engagement hacking crap. It’s glorious. I do not believe…

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  • Richard Bernabe on Twitter

    Richard Bernabe, in an otherwise good interview on his photography, says this about Twitter: I like Twitter, even if it does represent both the best and worst the Internet has to offer. If you’re there to argue politics with other humans, it most certainly is a dystopian hellscape that will make your life a dark,…

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  • Twitter Lists are having a moment

    Twitter recently released an updated UI that allows you to “pin” Lists you’ve created to your Home timeline view. This makes it possible to swipe between each List quickly. It is a nice feature – especially for those with only a few lists or for those just starting out with them*. Since this update was…

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  • Those who share, receive (or, how to get noticed or get work)

    I touched on this topic in 2017 in How do you get work?. But let me just pull one sentence from that post: The clear way to get work is to share work. The same thing goes for getting “noticed” if that is something you want or need. You have to put things out into…

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  • Hiking in March 2018 (audio)

    Recorded March 11, 2018. A photo I took while hiking this same day. A little over a year ago I went for a short hike in the snow just after returning from a trip to Kentucky and just before starting my job at Jujama. Side note: I record tons of these audio bits that I…

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  • My interpretations of announcements by Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter

    Apple pre-announcing something: “We’re excited to get this in customer’s hands late next year”. My interpretation: “We never pre-announce things. Why are we doing this? We’re terrible at it. In fact, we make fun of other companies for doing it! Steve Jobs would never allow this! (mostly) We must be doing this because some group…

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  • Zuckerberg’s note on privacy on social networks

    Mark Zuckerberg published a note on Facebook last night outlining his thoughts around privacy and social networking. I find it a fascinating read for several reasons. It reads like an internal memo – or even a draft of an internal memo – in that he repeats himself (sometimes verbatim) several times within the note. The…

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  • Twitter isn’t going anywhere

    Stephen Hackett, at 512 Pixels: Regardless of all of that, I think it’s clear the leadership at Twitter has no idea what they are doing, and I think the network’s time is ticking away faster than ever. Not to be contrarian but I disagree. Update January 24, 2019: I must have misread Hackett’s post. I…

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  • RSS is not dead. Subscribing is alive.

    Sinclair Target, writing for Motherboard: Today, RSS is not dead. But neither is it anywhere near as popular as it once was. This isn’t the first nor the last article to cover the creation of the RSS standard, its rise to relative popularity with Google Reader, and its subsequent fall from popularity. But the big…

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  • Twitter fixes their timeline

    YES!!!!!! The Verge: Twitter has made a surprise change to how it shows tweets to its users, following a viral thread earlier today that discussed ways to reverse the platform’s algorithmic timeline. Now, when you uncheck the settings box reading “Show the best tweets first,” Twitter will completely revert your timeline to a non-algorithmic, reverse-chronological…

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  • Manton Reece on smaller social networks

    Manton Reece: Many people are looking for “the next Twitter”, but it’s not enough to replace Twitter with a new platform and new leadership. Some problems are inevitable when power is concentrated in only 2-3 huge social networks — ad-based businesses at odds with user needs and an overwhelming curation challenge. This might be Mastodon’s…

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  • Leo Laporte leaves Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook

    Leo Laporte: Yesterday I deactivated my Twitter account and kicked Tumblr to the curb. A couple of weeks ago I did the same with Instagram. A month or so before that I killed Facebook. And I survived. No, thrived! I had deleted my Twitter account in the past and lived. And while I haven’t deleted…

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  • Real Twitter

    Over the weekend Andy Baio tweeted a URL to a search result that shows Twitter the way it used to be: This magical link shows your Twitter timeline in true chronological order—without retweets, liked tweets, or any algorithm nonsense. (On mobile? Click “Latest.”) Enjoy! Erin Sparling owned realtwitter.com and pointed it to that URL now.

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  • Keeping a record of your thoughts and media and owning it

    Go ahead and read Matt Haughey’s post on why he left Twitter. But I wanted to pull out this bit: I didn’t like that everything I wrote ended up being hard to find or reference, and even hard for me to pull up myself when I wanted, where a blog makes it pretty dang easy…

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  • The Android apps I use every day

    From the time I switched to Android in late-2017 (more here) I’ve been installing and uninstalling apps and services from my phone – trying to find the right mix for me. I expect the apps, preferences, and everything about my mobile experience to continue to change but lately it seems to have settled a little.…

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  • What I would write about Vero

    Colin Walker wrote his hot take on Vero and it is exactly what I would have written (only his post is far more eloquent than mine would have been). Go read the entire post but here are a few highlights. As soon as I saw what Vero was all about – the idea it “makes…

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  • Jack Baty on follower counts

    Jack Baty: Years ago on Twitter, I would use follower counts as an indicator of authority or perhaps as a way to gauge someone’s impact on a community or topic. With so many followers, he or she must have useful or interesting things to say, right? That probably wasn’t a great way to think about…

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  • An interview with Manton Reece of Micro.blog

    I have fond memories of the very early days of WordPress (when it had just been forked from b2/cafelog), of Twitter, of Brightkite, of App.net, of Mastodon… just to name a few. The early days of any platform or so important to what they will become. They are the most fun to watch. The early…

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  • Fred Wilson on owning your content

    Fred Wilson: I would never outsource my content to some third party. I blog on my own domain using open source software (WordPress) that I run on a shared server that I can move if I want to. It is a bit of work to set this up but the benefits you get are enormous.…

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  • Repost: Cabel Sasser re: Apple update caching

    👉 Cabel Sasser on Twitter: macOS 10.13 Tip: have lots of iOS / Mac devices in your house? And a Mac that’s usually on? Turn on "Content Caching" in Sharing prefs, and updates will be downloaded to all your devices from your Mac, saving time and bandwidth. LINK

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  • Threads now officially supported on Twitter

    Sasank Reddy, on the Twitter blog: Now, hundreds of thousands of threads are Tweeted every day! But this method of Tweeting, while effective and popular, can be tricky for some to create and it’s often tough to read or discover all the Tweets in a thread. That’s why we’re thrilled to share that we’re making…

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  • Follow Hashtags on Instagram

    Instagram: Today we’re introducing the ability to follow hashtags, giving you new ways to discover photos, videos and people on Instagram. Now it’s even easier to stay connected with the interests, hobbies, passions and communities you care about. This is an excellent feature. I won’t even go into all the ways Twitter should have been…

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  • Doug Lane on Microblogging tone

    Doug Lane, on thinking a bit more before publishing on his own site than he would on Twitter or Facebook: If I let moments of anger or frustration sit for a bit, one of two things will happen. Most likely, I’ll move on to something more meaningful without shoving valueless negativity in anyone else’s face.…

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  • Colin Walker \”be careful what you wish for\”

    Colin Walker: I spent years blogging about social media, trying to think about ways to drive mainstream adoption. When we reached the tipping point I had to ask "what now?" but still managed to find things to write about for a while. But, for the last several years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with social…

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  • Colin Walker \”be careful what you wish for\”

    Colin Walker: I spent years blogging about social media, trying to think about ways to drive mainstream adoption. When we reached the tipping point I had to ask "what now?" but still managed to find things to write about for a while. But, for the last several years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with social…

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  • Colin Walker \”be careful what you wish for\”

    Colin Walker: I spent years blogging about social media, trying to think about ways to drive mainstream adoption. When we reached the tipping point I had to ask "what now?" but still managed to find things to write about for a while. But, for the last several years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with social…

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  • Colin Walker \”be careful what you wish for\”

    Colin Walker: I spent years blogging about social media, trying to think about ways to drive mainstream adoption. When we reached the tipping point I had to ask "what now?" but still managed to find things to write about for a while. But, for the last several years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with social…

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  • Colin Walker \”be careful what you wish for\”

    Colin Walker: I spent years blogging about social media, trying to think about ways to drive mainstream adoption. When we reached the tipping point I had to ask "what now?" but still managed to find things to write about for a while. But, for the last several years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with social…

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  • Colin Walker \”be careful what you wish for\”

    Colin Walker: I spent years blogging about social media, trying to think about ways to drive mainstream adoption. When we reached the tipping point I had to ask "what now?" but still managed to find things to write about for a while. But, for the last several years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with social…

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  • Colin Walker \”be careful what you wish for\”

    Colin Walker: I spent years blogging about social media, trying to think about ways to drive mainstream adoption. When we reached the tipping point I had to ask "what now?" but still managed to find things to write about for a while. But, for the last several years, I have become increasingly disenchanted with social…

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  • Twitter’s new character UI

    Josh Wilburne, Designer at Twitter: With this in mind, we designed a system that defines two types of written languages, dense and non-dense, and expands the character limit for non-dense languages. By grouping languages this way, we can give people writing in non-dense languages like English and Spanish the same space to express themselves as…

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  • Rob Weychert reflects on 10 years of tweeting

    Rob Weychert, reflecting on 10 years of Twitter usage, and the next 10: I don’t know how the positive experiences I’ve had with Twitter stack up against the harm it’s caused, and I don’t know if I’ll be writing another post like this ten years from now, but I’m glad to have had the opportunity…

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  • Mike Monteiro on Twitter

    Mike Monteiro on Medium on Twitter: Twitter today is a cesspool of hate. A plague of frogs. Ten years ago, a group of white dudes baked the DNA of the platform without thought to harassment or abuse. They built the platform with the best of intentions. I still believe this. But they were ignorant to…

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  • Twitterrific for Mac

    Iconfactory: The Twitter app for people who actually use Twitter. Now all-new for macOS. Imagine if Twitter cared as much about their desktop and mobile apps (and the people who used them) as Iconfactory does.

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