Tag: Twitter

Toot Readers & Links

One thing about Mastodon that actually feels like twitter used to back in the day, is logging in and being able to catch up on updates of those you follow in 20 minutes.

I mean it’s likely due to the fact I haven’t followed tonnes of people at this stage, but even without adverts,  there is/was a lot of company spam on Twitter, how many contests did I enter where following was expected?

But I’m not entirely gone from Twitter, there are still a number of folks that are only on that platform that I like to see updates from, secretly hoping the migrate somewhere soon, as I don’t want to cut them out completely.

Sadly there are some that are just leaving Social Media altogether like Jeff Atwood who tweets I enjoy quite a bit.

I have been pondering following Belghast’s example and greyscaling my twitter icon and header and marking my account as private, but after 15 years I’m not quiet at that step just yet, maybe by the time 2023 arrives.

All links on me

In other news I wanted a common site to link all my online presences together, I like Linktree but thought why not just add one to my website, so I built find.welshtroll.co.uk to start things off.

I am hoping to develop this into a more fully formed site in the future, some on a need by need basis, others like light/dark theme modes or opening links in new tabs.

 

Birdsite and me

Fail WhaleFor days now the following quote has been floating around in my head.

Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair

Given the apparent state of Twitter right now, it feels that we are on the precipice of loosing not only a large social platform but a big chunk of our own personal history in the process. With no real way to repair it or step back from it and all trust bulldozered into a pit.

Thinking back to the brief series of years when MySpace was growing and  everyone was signing up and curating their pages, it was great fun but it’s duration and impact on my life pales when compared with Twitter, for many of us it has been one of the main platforms in our daily life.

I know Twitter was never perfect, I know that many folks see the platform as a dreadful place, for many it became a chore, something they have to interact with to ensure their brand awareness, it was part of modern life. Sadly for others they experienced the worst side of things and have been on the receiving end of continuous hate and abuse via the platform.

For me Twitter has been good, I have met so many great people, been introduced to new music, learnt about other cultures and people in a way that was engaging and wasn’t just reading an article, plus interacting with people was easy.
Thinking back over the years, the number of breaking News items that I first heard about on Twitter far outweighs those I heard from any news site or official news channel.

Where the Wild Things Are

EM said

Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.

However given that users with Checkmarks will have their voices louder than everyone else, it undermines that statement quite a bit. Those unable to pay become second class citizens of humanity in his eyes.
Admittedly he said the statement before trying to back out of a deal to buy the company, maybe that explains part of his behaviour.

Or maybe someone that thought, since they run 2 other companies, another will just be more of the same.

Reading some of the posts by Twitter staff who have opted to not sign up for EM’s extremely hardcore Twitter 2.0, I genuinely feel sorry that their years of dedication to the site has come to an end. I wish them all the best luck in the future.

Going back to that first quote, has the damage done already been too great, too impactful, there is no repairing that can bring something that has been killed. Previously we had to trust a corporate entity that was semi-faceless, now we are expected to trust … who? EM?

I’m not sure what the future of Twitter looks like, I know many folks are planning on sticking around until the last. But what if the site keeps hobbling along until the promised 2.0 is delivered, where is the line?

And does anyone have the stomach to endure that whole process?
I’m not sure that I do.

Like not my favourite

5 Days before my 8th Twttr birthday they announced that they were rebranding Favourite to Like, apparently it’s part of “the company’s latest effort to simplify the user experience as it looks to attract new users”, which translates into what?
We want to be like Facebook so people can sign up and find out it’s nothing like Facebook.
At least the introduction of the Twitter Poll avoids the stupid “If you agree like, if you disagree retweet” Facebook style polls.

Maybe the star is confusing or misleading, perhaps some people were making a wish when they clicked it.
Anyway someone should tell Google that Chrome is the odd one out now.
favourites

The sad part is that I would often use the favourite feature to mark tweets I wanted to reply or discuss later, often it was to remind me to visit a link that had been posted to a blog or game. Almost in the same vein as bookmarking the Tweet.
That said in the early days I used to go through them on a weekend and clear the favourites off the tweets. Maybe not so easy now as I tend to Favourite more frequently.

Maybe Like doesn’t convey the usage just the fact I’ve seen it or maybe it will evolve to become the same thing as Favourite did.
However the strange thing about Twitter Likes versus Facebook Likes, is that Twitter makes it a big visible part of your profile, “Come and look at all the things this person favourited but now they are listed as likes and have a different meaning”.

Maybe that part of my frustration is that they altered the meaning, now it implies that I like and support everything, rather than just favouriting it for later.
I suppose I can just look back and find interesting items completely out of context like this.

This verge articles closing statement sums it up really :

The newest mode of engagement on Twitter is a bit less versatile, a bit less powerful, a bit more compressed.

I don’t follow

I recently discovered that one of my favourite useful websites has risen from the grave. I originally stumbled onto Unladen Follow while looking for the exact thing it was offering. In a nutshell it analyses your Twitter feed and applies a weighting factor to each account you follow based on the recent activity including Quantity, Mentions, Hashtags and others.

Each person you follow is rated in highly scientific Weekly Tweet Load Units (TLU). Your total TLUs are an indicator of how much noise you consume on Twitter every week, based on links, replies, hashtags, talking about Twitter itself, and simple tweet volume.

unladen1The website originally stopped working I think it was when Twitter changed their API and up until a few months ago it was still not working for me.

Of course things aren’t as bad now but in years past I would find that following high noise people which ultimately meant Twitter became unusable due to the volume of Tweets. Naturally celebrities are frequently in the top of the list, normally surrounded by news sites.

As you can see from my list below certain accounts stand out more than others and if you want to remove them then you can head over to twitter and do just that, it’s not something the application does.

I used to try and keep lists of certain groups but gave up on that very quickly.
If you feel that deleting is a little harsh or maybe someone is just getting excited about a sporting event, you can always use the mute feature on Twitter that keeps you following someone and but without them showing in your feed.

unladen2

#Twitter #Blaugust

This and that

Well I’ve not really had much time to update my blog sadly, Additionally i’ve struggled for things to post if i’m being honest. I really need to note down topics as I see them.

I’m still about on twitter and you can also find my information on friendfeed now too.

I also signed up to GamerDNA, which is like a social networking for gaming type people, not too much there to be honest good idea tho,not sure how long I’ll remember to keep an eye on it.