Thanks, Twitter, it’s been fun
Among other things
I’m going to deactivate my Twitter account, probably permanently. I’ve recently signed up for Micro.blog and I don’t want to split my attention between several different sites which are doing much the same kind of thing.
Also, I think I’m inclined to move away from sites with too pronounced a “social” element. Micro.blog doesn’t have features like retweets, likes or hashtags and doesn’t display a follower count (even to the person being followed). Because of this, the site stands a good chance of avoiding the distractions and annoyances of Twitter.
If you’d like to know what I’m up to but don’t want to sign up for Micro.blog, one possibility would be to subscribe to the RSS (actually JSON) feed, or simply bookmark my microposts.
As I said, I think I’m moving away from social sites. An obvious exception to this is Medium, which has definite social elements such as follower counts and applause/approval, as well as comments on stories. In practice, however, I tend to ignore the follower counts and I find the applause useful, if of secondary importance to the page views and read counts.
Apart from Medium and Micro.blog, I’m concentrating my attention on Mix.com, a “curated discovery” site which has developed out of StumbleUpon. I have about 9 collections on Mix, most of them having to do with fiction, literature and writing. For example, one is called “Writers on Writing” and another contains links to short stories which can be read online (on sites other than Medium).
Update: I deactivated my Mix account too, in December 2019, and I’ve been tending to post less on Medium and more on my own site.
