Changing times, changing platforms
With Twitter going down in flames, I’ve decided to move the newsletter off my self-hosted platform on my blog and come over here to join the Substack party again.
I’ve enabled the chat feature (which I’m unclear? does it only work on the app?), and comments are open, so who knows? Maybe we’ll all go back to a kind of interconnected blogging? Like the old days?
I have deeply mixed feelings about the amount of time I’ve spent on Twitter the past couple of years, but not about the communities we built there. For the constellation of us all out here, in our home offices or coffee shops, making a living on our laptops, Twitter has been our water cooler, our place to ask un-google-able questions, and far too often, a place to bear witness as disasters, wars, and protests have unfolded. I will miss it.
But things change. Platforms change. While Substack is corporate, I still have my self-hosted blog (and I’ll be cross posting there if you’d rather not get more stuff in your inbox). And I’m quite enjoying Mastodon. I’m not convinced it’ll be the next “thing” — but maybe it’s time for the One Thing model to crack apart some. Maybe it’s time for us to go back to work, rebuilding our online networks the old fashioned way — by reaching out to and following one another, and by doing so in something more than 240 word sound bites.
I should have a real post for you all soon, and I hope we can start building some new spaces where we can explore ideas, build connections, and get out from under the heavy hand of “the algorithm” …