My Twitter Account is old enough to sneak out and drink

It has been thirteen years. In the tech world that is basically two to three life times of a regular startup. If I recall my time on Twitter correctly I opened an account when tweeting by SMS was still a thing, decided I do not like it and came back when the web interface became the favored method of tweeting.

Since then I have seen Twitter clients come and go. I have seen them lock down their API nearly killing third party clients and tanking the UI and UX of their own client. I have tweeted when the MacBook Air was pulled out of an envelop. I have plurked - remember Plurk? :) - when the fail whale was the only thing you would see on the page. It was the platform I used most to talk to a sweet girl that later became my wife. As most others I complained about all the abusive and hostile behavior certain groups show on the platform - as on any other free platform gaining enough traction.

Twitter had a certain impact on my personal and professional life. Enough that I am willing to pay for it to make it better and keep it around. Looking back Twitter „was dying“ at least once every other year. And obviously other social networks were ready to fill the gap. (How did that work out App.net?)

Looking back at 13 years there are lots of memories. And putting it in the context of a teen, my account would likely sneak out to have a beer with friends. Feels crazy how long ago I tweeted a few random lines trying to figure out what the platform is, certainly not able to anticipate what it will become.

Twitter is not perfect. It messed up in the past. A lot. Sometimes they tried to reverse course, sometimes they stuck to decisions anyone who is not holding Twitter stock likely thinks were bad. There are cetainly enough problems that pain the platform to add work for months (if not years) to their backlogs. But I am looking forward to hopefully many more years of this crazy place where I can have a short conversation with professional esport players on the other side of the planet, check in what friends are up to, what my profession is angry about this week and get funny cat memes delivered directly to my device on a regular basis.

>> posted on Oct. 10, 2020, midnight in life