Wondering about my Twitter future

I’ve been watching, with some amusement, the goings on at Twitter and wondering what, if anything, I should do. I’m skeptical that the whole thing is going to implode, although I am not nearly as sanguine that it will not become even worse than it currently is. To an extent, I cannot avoid the mayhem, because a social channel that I like and enjoy has an automatic import of any tweet that contains the word “IndieWeb,” as a result of which one of the rooms is swamped with people whispering into the void that people can follow them on Mastodon at [email protected]. I skim past them at a rate of knots, just in case there is something of actual interest that I don’t want to miss.

My indecision is prompted mostly by the fact that I have never been a power user of Twitter. Sure, I follow a few people and they often share stuff that is interesting and useful. The sturm und drang I manage to avoid. And while I do tweet about new podcast episodes and newsletters, I don’t have a huge sense that anybody is listening. Has anyone actually subscribed as a result of my quiet drumbeat of self-promotion? I don’t think so.

What, then, to do?

Maybe nothing. In that, I am emcouraged by something John Naughton wrote yesterday:

An obvious question — given that Twitter is a niche platform — why does its future matter? After all, a PEW survey recently found that only 23% of US adults use it — compared with the 81% who use YouTube, the 69% who use Facebook and the 40% who are on Instagram.

I do even less self-promotion on Facebook and Instagram than on Twitter, and none at all on YouTube,¹ and get a better response, at least from Instagram. So maybe I’ll just carry on as before. Or maybe I’ll syndicate to Mastodon in the same way that I currently syndicate to Twitter.

Until Twitter does actually implode it is likely to continue to be a source of copy for news media, which is a shame, and a source of news for me, which is not. So I will probably hang around there for as long as it makes sense.