Twitter has been part of my social media environment since 2008. It took me some time to figure out if the service was good for anything and then I gradually found uses that brought my attention to the service on a daily basis.
In the early days, most of the comments lacked any substance. Eventually, I found value when others with interests similar to my own began to link to blog posts they had authored or other online resources. I had originally relied on using RSS to monitor what others posted. Interest in RSS has declined. Why this has happened is unclear. Perhaps RSS seems geeky and intimidating to casual users. Twitter is easy.
I found it important to have my blogging platform (WordPress) automatically generate a tweet indicating I had added a new post. WordPress collects data on the way viewers connected to blog author’s content (e.g., direct, search, Twitter, referrals) and the amount of traffic I received from Twitter demonstrated the importance of sharing what I wrote to Twitter.
As the number of my followers on Twitter accumulated, it seemed I should Twitter to share whatever I had to say about anything. It became to use Facebook for longer content and Twitter for short comments.
I now find myself trying to decide what to do about Twitter. I share two distinct types of information and I am unsure of the direction Twitter will go in the future. I don’t want my professional content (the shared links to my blog posts) to be tainted if Twitter becomes like TruthSocial. I am also concerned about building up a following somewhere else.
My present approach is to wait and see what happens with Twitter. I am also diversifying the sharing of links to my blog posts (Mastodon). We seem to be in a time of transition.
