🐣 Surviving in the post-Twitter era

Let's try something new. In this post-Twitter era (maybe even post-social media era) newsletters seem to be hot. I subscribed to a few good ones myself and thought it might be a good format to experiment with.

From now on, you may receive a newsletter once in a while. I'm not committing to weekly, monthly or even quarterly sends – I will merely appear in your inbox when I have something interesting to say or share. Each newsletter will revolve around a specific topic within my interest range. And oh, I have many interests!

So, here goes: my first newsletter.
‌‌I hope you enjoy it!

👋🏻 Bye-bye Tweetbot, bye-bye Twitter

‌Musk's take-over of Twitter meant the downfall of the only social media platform I ever loved and the only one I still actively used. Funny things started happening, but I hung on, thinking it wouldn't be that bad. But only a few months in third party apps were blocked from using the Twitter API and that, for me, was the final straw.

You see, I have been using a third party app for years. Tweetbot made Twitter more enjoyable because it displayed my timeline in a chonological order, without junk from people I didn't follow, and without ads. On top of that, the app was really fun to use. (Remember those cute little sounds? If you switched to Mastodon, I recommend taking a look at Ivory.)

My dislike of the Twitter app and website, made me leave Twitter for what it is and search for alternatives - both for following people online and for publishing my own content.

💻 The only platform you can rely on

At the end of 2022, my Twitter feed started to look quite empty. Most of my followees switched to Mastodon, but I decided not too. If anything, this fiasco proved to me (again) that the only platform you can really rely on is your own. And that's why I revived my website.

In my search for an easy to use CMS (I came to resent WordPress in the last couple of years), I discoverd this gem named Ghost. It's a platform for creators – from bloggers to podcasters and YouTubers. You can publish free content or offer paid subscriptions. And I love it because of its simplicity and straightforwardness.

At first I wanted to create a microblog. Posting short messages, just like I used to do on Twitter. But, as you know, my posts turned out to be quite a bit longer. And because personal blogging is so 2006, I'm currently writing this newsletter.

So, alternative for publishing my own content: ✅

💎 Something random

These were my first tweets ever, dated December 13, 2007. Note that my life clearly wasn't very interesting back then, I still don't like waiting, and I was working on a school project (packaging design for fairtrade yuca chips).

📚 Where's Google Reader when you need it?

With no more Twitter feed to scroll through, I had to find another way to follow people online. I checked my followees' Twitter profiles and subscribed to their newsletters and RSS feeds. But, Google Reader being discontinued in 2013, I had to search the landscape for a decent RSS service or app. To my surprise, I discovered a new kind of allround reading apps that combine:

• subscribing to RSS feeds
• forwarding newsletters to a unified inbox
• adding items to a read later list

In the end I settled on Matter. It does all of the above. Upnext was on my shortlist as well. It looks like a pretty good read later app, but it doesn't do RSS. They are working on it though, so I might come back to it later.

Alternative for following interesting people online: ✅