Where do we go?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Last week, Doug Gault tweeted this:

There was a bit of spirited discussion that followed, but no real direction or solution. Sure, a bunch of us have jumped over to Mastodon (I'm @sspendol@mastodon.cloud and sites like LinkedIn and Reddit were proposed as alternatives to Twitter.

But are any of those the right answer?

It's impossible to pick up all our my followers and demand that they move with us anywhere. Thus, the reach that we have on a different platform will be much less than we do on Twitter. Personally, I've been using Twitter since 2009 or so; that's a lot of time put into a platform and not easily transferrable.

I do feel that it is prudent to have some sort of backup plan ready so that the APEX community can still stay connected. A lot of people have put in a lot of work to forge and foster this community, and no one wants to see it fall apart. Better to be prepared for a disaster and not have to execute a contingency than the alternative.

So I echo Doug's question: in the case of a Twitter meltdown, where can we as a community go?

LinkedIn seems too busy, but is likely the best short-term solution since many people are also on there. It also has a more professional feel to it that many of the other alternatives.

Reddit is, well, Reddit. While it has some very lively communities, there's a lot of, well, "other things" on there that may trigger corporate firewalls if visited too frequently.

A lot of people don't use Facebook at all, so that's likely not the best place, either.

Mastodon is still too new, obscure and a little too quiet. It does have a lot of potential to replace Twitter since it mimics the timeline and limited length content format. Perhaps it only becomes truly viable if and when Twitter collapses, since there's already a small community of APEX developers already there.

I don't have the energy for TikTok. Sorry, Michele. :)

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.