potential Twitter replacements

With the slow death of Twitter, I’ve been trying some of the new social media to see what might be a replacement.

The term “social media” can be a little misleading. Many people tend to think that they all do the same thing, or even want them to do the same thing, and they do not. For instance Facebook, at its best, is a means of keeping in touch with people you know. Or at Facebook’s absolute most useful, it’s an excellent means of informing people that someone has died. (Yes I know people will read that and say “I’d expect a phone call instead,” and I get it, but having had to inform people of several deaths over the past few years I can say that I have a ten person cap on how many people I’m willing to phone, and that’s a hard cap, if you want me to do it well it should probably be closer to five. By that point I’m grateful for Facebook.)

Before Musk destroyed it, Twitter served a number of functions. Yes it could have that viral tweet that could get you noticed, but the main thing for me about Twitter were all the people I followed. I followed entertainers, historians, scientists, mathematicians, game developers, writers… and I learned from all of them. I often saw news days before it made it into a newspaper or even onto Cable News. I learned about their podcasts and books which I in turn listened to and read, and I’m grateful to the Twitter that was for providing that platform. Unfortunately even if it doesn’t downward spiral into hardware oblivion, Musk has driven off so many of those people that Twitter hasn’t felt right for some time.

So what are the replacements and what do they accomplish?

First I don’t think any are fully formed yet. They are still evolving. I think if people had known a year ago how badly Musk would implode Twitter, there might have been some serious work done to have these things readier by now, but here is what I have observed:

Mastodon: seems to be a friendly site. People on there seem kind and do represent a wide range of interests. They will have to overcome a technology barrier I think. Signup is confusing for those of us who don’t run our own Linux servers. Basically you have to pick a server and while a decentralized system has its advantages, it also is confusing for a casual user. Also the phone app and the web version do not contain the same information particularly about my profile which is frustrating to manage. That said, I think if they can get a large enough network of people, Mastodon may serve the best functions of Facebook and Twitter.

Post: It may just be who is on there currently and who I’m following, but it seems like Post has the potential to replace the breaking news function that Twitter provided. When I go on there I tend to see the latest articles from ProPublica or see a lost of posts from Marc Elias and Democracy Docket. I have not seen much for my nerdier interests: science, gaming, comics, genre fiction, etc. Also the phone app seems to be something of an after thought or at least a work in progress.

Hive: At first I thought this site had the most potential, it has a nice UI. In some ways it feels like a hybrid of Twitter and Instagram, and I still think it has the potential to replace many of the media interests from Twitter. Unfortunately their team is very small and although they might have been able to scale things up organically had Musk not shit the Twitter bed so badly, they are clearly not ready yet. Also their search (trending topics) type feature looks way too Instagrammy for my liking. I’m an old curmudgeon. I want to see text so I know what something is about. If search for what is trending and it’s just pictures of young women in bikinis, that’s not what I’m looking for. As of the last time I checked, this only is on a phone app and has no web client, although hopefully that’s in the works.

Those are the ones I’ve looked at. Maybe one or all of them will develop into something more, and who knows maybe Musk will have a rare moment of clarity, though that seems really unlikely.

If you want to find me on any of those sites, I’m pretty sure I’ve picked the handle mewelke for all of them.