The Weight of Twitter

Twitter was a vehicle I used to connect to a diverse set of voices in technology. That’s as concise and positive a spin as I can put these days.

Ten years

I used to think everyone in tech shared my slight obsession with Twitter until roughly 2015 when it dawned on me that many (particularly of a younger generation) engineers were not on Twitter, or used it only for the occasional shock value, meme content or some celebrity meltdown.

Forwarding a few articles to folks (early reviews on a major software release or blog posts on topics I knew would resonate with someone), someone once asked, “How do you even find these great articles? I wish I could do that.”

“It’s not me,” I would say. “It’s people I found on Twitter.”

“Oh, I never check Twitter. I can’t find anything there.”

The Users Manual at the End of Twitter

Twitter has always been a hot mess without lists. Using lists (and using Tweetbot as a client) were the only ways Twitter was ever usable to me.

I could have spent more time letting people know how to get meaningful content out of Twitter, but these days the point is moot. We have all moved on (or will move on).

In the long run however, the lesson here is to use social media in a way that provides value to you. Luckily I found a way to do that with Twitter, and I have learned so much through it.

But it’s probably too late for Twitter. Perhaps next time we’ll get it right and bring more people along as well.