Twitter is a sad, unsurprising story. But I’m comforted by some good news:

All things are temporary, even platforms.

I’ve come to accept that all content I produce on someone else’s platform is impermanent. But it’s important to note:

Some platforms are less impermanent than others.

In light of Twitter’s mess, I’ve embraced three alternative platforms.

My three platforms

The two less impermanent platforms I’ve embraced are:

• WordPress dot com (my websites and RSS feeds) and
• ConvertKit (my mailing list).

One more impermanent (but friendly) place I’ve embraced is Hachyderm, a LGTBQIA+ friendly Mastodon instance for respectful tech professionals.

It’s run out of someone’s basement. I’m under no illusions, and they’ve been very clear about expectations:

Update: Sounds like the infrastructure has had some changes! But my intentions are the same.

How I’ll use these platforms

Reducing my dependence on Twitter means making some changes to my habits around sharing, discussing, and writing. Here’s what I intend to do.

First, if I want to play with ideas and chat with friendly folks, I’ll do that on Hachyderm.

Second, if I want a more durable record of something I’ve been thinking about, I will blog it at HiredThought.com or LearnWardleyMapping.com.

Third, if I want more control of who I can reach / distribute my writing to, I’ll focus on my LWM mailing list, and share my best stuff with them.

And lastly, if I want to 100% stay in touch with someone, I will email, text or call, or hang out in a small scale community like discord.

I’m grateful that I recently invested in Johanna Rothman’s writing course. As a result, writing has gotten much more easy and free. It’s making this transition much easier to have the confidence to write. This post is one example.

In response to some of my thoughts here, Johanna had some wise words to share about other people’s platforms:

Writing on less impermanent platforms is what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future.

As for everything else? Here’s what I expect: Easy come, easy go.