Tag: Twitter

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Business Politics Technology Web

I am leaving Twitter

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(Update 11-20-2024) Here is my Bluesky social profile. || I think I may need to go back to Twitter to back up some data, from time to time. I did a backup in last year but I think it was a big json file. Two things I may miss: one is health/fitness tips; another one is stock related (which I think as a more serious investor, I should try to ignore it so called #finTwit.

(Original) After 15 years, I mean the social media, not a job or something. I never worked for them. Although looking back I should have joined them back in 2008, or at least trying to apply for a job there, and get some stocks.

Why I am leaving:

In two words: Elon Musk. Elon created a lot of controversies during his about one year long ownership saga, from his public proposal to buy the company, after secretly building up a stake, to fire lots of people (which he may have a valid point, note a few big tech companies followed too, such Meta), to not paying bills for the Twitter SF office.

But the latest one: labelling NPR as “Government-funded Media” is the last straw for me. I googled “how much government fund npr is receiving”, and here is the answer: “NPR gets roughly 1-2% of its funding from the federal government, while the majority of its funding comes from corporate sponsorships and fees charged to local radio stations, according to the New York Times.” (source: NYTimes via Forbes). This is a cheap shot from Elon in my opinion.

Note NPR is one of my favorite news source, and I remember the days (more than 20 years ago), I listened to “Morning edition” from KWMU (now STL Public radio) on my morning commute. In addition to getting news, I improved my English listening comprehension greatly from listening to them. Other programs I listened frequently over the years: The Diane Rehm Show; MarketPlace; All Things Considered etc. In recent years, Some nights when I could not fall into sleep, I also listened to the BBC World Service via STL Public radio: it has a variety of topics. In the US, NPR may be considered a bit liberal or progressive (as opposed to the Fox News), but it’s mostly politically neural (similar to PBS). A fun fact, while a lot of western media are blocked in China, NPR is not (at least not now as of April 2023).

On the social media front, I will continue to be on FB (Instagram), LinkedIn, and YouTube. On blogging side, I have this stlplace.com blog website as well as medium, and substack. Btw, I posted some of the blog post here to the medium and substack.

Just notied that I have a post on Twitter about 6 months ago.

PS: as of 04-22-2023, it appears Twitter removed the “government-funded” label for NPR on Twitter. But it seems a bit late, at least for now, to get NPR back on Twitter, per this thread. Meanwhile, I am thinking back to Twitter for my own benefit. Consume or tweet in moderation.

PS 2: 06-05-2023, I bought the Twitter Blue today.

Categories
Investing Stocks Technology

Twitter

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I joined Twitter back in March 2008, and it’s been 14 years since I joined it. I don’t remember the exact reason I joined it, but I think one reason is probably in the early days of iOS (iPhone) app development, many developers are on Twitter as well. In recent years, the platform has expanded beyond techies, and into politics, entertainment, breaking news etc. The breaking news feature of Twitter has been there for a while, in my opinion. We can find important news on election, on both domestic and international affairs such as war, and so on. Twitter itself grew quite a bit over last 14 years too. I still remember in its early days, it’s quite often to see the whale picture when the system was down. I vaguely recall when they started they used Ruby (Ruby on rails) a web technology was popular or getting traction then, and slowly changed to something more comprehensive or complicated.

For me personally I probably switched my interest there too, in last few years, I am mostly interested in FinTweets (financial or stock related tweets). I tried to stay away from politics, and it was not always successful.

Compared to other platform such as Facebook and LinkedIn, I think I am more open minded, or sometimes blunt, one reason is probably I don’t know a lot of people in person, another reason is probably the culture of Twitter itself is more open. Note Tweets by default is available to everyone in the world (something newbies on twitter sometimes did not realize).

The business of Twitter obviously was not doing well over its 10 years of public market presence, until Elon took it over recently. Elon may even has some of his points: on people’s desire to work or not work, and blue verified could help clean up the public / digital town square. Interesting to learn some of his other thoughts such as easy / smooth jazz mode, vs heavy metal mode (combat mode?), and also his X.com grand plan 22 years ago. This is a recent interview of Elon btw.

Back to Elon’s idea (or ideal) of public / digital town square. This reminded me of something. Note I grew up in China and free speech (like the 1st amendment in the US constitution) was not emphasized. But in 1980s when I was in high school there was still a lot room for feedback or open communication. So once the students in my class put up a feedback notebook, and things quickly went off rails (imagine the early days of the BBS or discussion forum, and then put high school kids to it). Good intention alone sometimes is not enough. I guess similar can be said about Elon’s dream about full automatous driving (self driving), as well as the robots that do all of our work (in addition to chores).

Categories
Web

Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter

Reading Time: < 1 minuteBlogging is declining. My friend Wang Jianshuo reminds me about this trend. Obviously Jianshuo has much more authority on this because he started blogging on Sept 11 2002 and has a large followers at his blog.

On the other hand, I have joined Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter this year (not necessarily in this order). And it seems to me all three websites are going strong. The main reason? I think it’s the networking effect. Facebook has been hot for a while, esp. among college students. LinkedIn got popular this year particularly since the recession made job search more difficult, and networking is much more important to land an interview or a job (compared to easy times). Twitter is more interesting, I noticed it changed slogan from “what’re you doing” to “what’s happening”. This precisely reflects the change of emphasis of Twitter, and the power of twitter, from Iran post-election to StockTwits (and many sites based on twitter, see 20 Twitter Apps you need to know).

Interestingly, I noticed one co-founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, is also the author of blogger. Maybe Evan already knows about this trend when he co-founded Twitter, which started a a mini-blog platform?