News this week that Twitter will be sold and taken private took the Twitter community by storm.
While some Twitter users are thrilled about the prospect of the new owner, many others—women, people of color, LGBTQ, disabled people, and their advocates—are reasonably concerned about the prospective new owner’s anti-censorship focus.
Personally, I’ve already learned several of the people I follow on Twitter have left or will soon be leaving.
I know a few have chosen to join alternative platforms like Mastodon or Discord. Others have returned to Facebook.
Hard Decision to Leave Twitter
I remember the change from online forums to Facebook and Twitter in the mid- to late-2000’s.
For me, it was a difficult decision for me to leave the comfort of moderated private online forums for a public platform like Twitter.
For months, I kept me Twitter account private. Due to my concerns about privacy.
After a few months, I took my account public.
And connected and interacted with people in the accessibility, user experience, web design, and WordPress communities.
People around the world who I’ve never met in person.
As an early adopter of Twitter, I’ve been on Twitter since 2007, I’ve seen how it has changed from sharing what you’re doing to a community to a resource for news, emergency information, and education.
Features like Twitter Spaces and Twitter Lists have allowed users to create and build communities for people they work and interact with as well as who they learn from.
Those features may be hard to find in other platforms.
But that doesn’t mean other platforms won’t offer additional features people want in a social platform.
My Thoughts
I think it’s too early to leave Twitter. Nothing has changed. Yet.
The sale of Twitter has to be approved. It may take months for that to happen.
That doesn’t mean you can’t prepare for the possibility of the sale being finalized.
Which means considering how you can:
- Maintain your communities
- Share your writing
- Stay in touch with your Twitter friends and colleagues
- Follow people who share helpful and inspirational writings
How can you prepare?
My Recommendations
Depending on your time and interests, here’s what I recommend.
Keep using Twitter until/if the sale goes through. But prepare for the possibility of the sale.
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Start a website or blog to share your thoughts and writing
Rather than using a third-party platform to publish your writing and thoughts, publish your content on your own website.
There’s no worry about what happens to your content and community when Twitter, Facebook, Discord, etc. change their policies or get sold.
Or gets shut down.
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Use RSS on your site
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an easy way for people to subscribe to a feed of content on a blog, website, or other online publication.
Basically, it’s an online file that contains a list of content with links for a specific site or online publication.
It’s one of the oldest technologies on the web.
Often called the feed or RSS feed, RSS is automatically updated whenever new content is published on a site.
RSS is part of WordPress, Wix, Blogger, WebFlow, and other publishing platforms. On some platforms you may need to turn it on.
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Use an RSS feeder
An RSS feeder (often called a feed reader) parses the code from the RSS feed into a more readable format for people.
Subscribing to blogs you follow with an RSS feeder allows you to follow your favorite blogs, websites, podcasts, and publications.
RSS feeders are free or premium. Which reader to choose from?
I’ve been using Feedly for years, ever since Google Reader closed down.
But there are many to choose from.
Here’s my list of favorite readers (as of April 2022), which include web versions as well as Android and iOS apps:
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Follow your Twitter list by subscribing to their feeds
Thanks to my friend Chris Wiegman for publishing his post today on how to follow your Twitter list even if you leave Twitter.
Chris shared the Twitter Followings OPML Export web-based tool that crawls profiles of people you follow on Twitter, grabs their feeds, and exports the info into a file you can import into your feed reader.
Wrapping Up
Until the sale is complete, there are no changes to Twitter. You can continue to use it.
Which is my plan.
My recommendations: give thought to what happens if the sale goes through and prepare for that possibility.
Start your own blog, use RSS, get an RSS feeder, and subscribe to the feeds of the people you follow on Twitter.
If you’re a Twitter user, are you making any plans to change how you use it?
March 2, 2023 update: I moved to Mastodon in November 2022. As of March 1, 2023, Mastodon is my main social network. I deleted my Twitter account.
