The recent and unexpectedly fast implosion of Twitter made me realize that it’s just not a place that I want to spend much more of my time. It seems to me like there are a lot of other folks that feel the same. I have been spending more time over on Mastodon and keep seeing some version of the same comment over and over—“Wow, this feels like the old, pre-corporate social media Web”. I agree.

I built my first website in 2007. I was about to be laid off from my job at the time and needed an online portfolio fast so I could put it on my resume. I authored all of the static HTML and CSS by hand. After a couple weeks of work I ended up with a folder full of files that I dragged from my hard drive and dropped at the root of my new hosting account with a plain old FTP client. And that was it, I had a website! What a cool feeling.

I’ve had a lot of those same nostalgic feelings the past couple of weeks. It’s got me fired up to put more energy into my personal site where I own all the content I create. For now, this is how I’m thinking about my relationship with the web and social media:

1. My personal site as home base—If I want to share a thought, maybe write a blog post instead
2. Mastodon for sharing and interaction with humans
3. RSS for keeping up with with other folks that are writing on their own sites

Honestly, I’m addicted to Twitter and it’s probably going to take me a while to give it up completely, but I have spent considerably less time there in the last couple of weeks and I plan to keep that up. If you feel the same maybe grab my RSS feed and/or find me on Mastodon. ✌️