MIKE MANEY

Twitter was never a social network to me. I mean, sure, I made and had friends there. And I interacted with reporters, analysts, and influencers. But it was first and foremost a newsfeed. A wire service of industry and world news. A place to spot trends and stay on top of breaking events. It was RSS on ‘roids.

And then it imploded.

How do you replicate that river of news? It’s not like journalists stopped producing news. For some of us old timers, RSS fills some of that void. But it’s not the same. Many have migrated to the fediverse to maintain as much of those Twitter connections as possible. But it’s not the same, either. Twitter was different.

The fediverse shows promise as a Twitter replacement, but it’s likely too byzantine for a generation raised on walled-garden technologies. But it’s what we’ve got today. So how do we use it to fill the Twitter void? I’m just spitballing here, but I could envision someone cranking up a Mastodon instance just for technology new outlets to let their publishing bots run free. An instantaneous RSS feed, if you will. I’m sure others also have ideas (sound off in the comments).

The scale of technology is shifting, the weight transferring from random algorithms and advertising to individual control of the bits and bytes one puts out into the world. It’ll be messy. It’ll take time. But make no mistake, it’s happening.