blaineNov 11, 2022

While everyone's being nostalgic about what Twitter means to them, I may as well add my two cents.

I didn't give birth to Twitter – that was Jack and Florian. But I was its midwife and adoptive mother; for two months in early 2007, I was the code's sole guardian and caretaker.

I was also the first person to hate Twitter; back when it was SMS-only, I did the math and realized that my immigrant prepaid phone plan would charge me $2000/year to send and receive even a 2006-era number of tweets. 🧵

Show threadblaineNov 11, 2022
But, eventually, I came to love it, and it's lived rent-free in my head ever since. In so many ways, it defines me as much as I want it not to. It's a relationship that's unreciprocated – the job will never love you back. A friend used to say that I didn't owe it anything, but ...
Show threadblaineNov 11, 2022
Twitter – the concept, not the collection of servers and contracts and code – is something so much bigger than a job. It's the most visceral representation of human communication and ideas that we've ever created. And how do you let *that* go? (no seriously, if you've got ideas!)
Show threadblaineNov 11, 2022

That's another aspect to this that is so poignant for me, personally. I tried to make Twitter better. I tried to make Twitter the fediverse, back in 2008, and after I failed, I left and tried to make the fediverse a thing without Twitter.

That was not an easy task. For a long time, I truly felt it was my fault, personally, that we failed. The enormity of Twitter became oppressive, because it was so obviously the wrong thing, corrupted from its potential by capital and a lack of imagination.

Show threadblaineNov 11, 2022
Seeing Mastodon and the fediverse succeed today is deeply gratifying and hopeful for me. It's imperfect and early, but watching thousands of people birth communities that they can nurture and shape and watch grow and evolve, after so many years hoping and dreaming of this ...
Show threadblaineNov 11, 2022
Well, it's not a feeling I can easily express. It feels like Spring. And the Winter, on Twitter – there's a feeling of loss, but also clarity. The trees laid bare, the bright snow on the ground. It's space for less, before something new.
Show threadblaineNov 11, 2022
A former job was at another Great Empire of Culture, from a previous century. I realized there that technology has more in common with the past than we admit. It, too, is a fashion industry. Styles and fame come and go, inevitably.
Show threadblaineNov 11, 2022
The constant is us: the communities we nurture, the culture we create. The space we cherish is just a vessel for those. It hasn't always been an easy ride, but I'm delighted that this place has been one of those cherished spaces, and proud of the role I played. ❤️🪺
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@blaine ❤️
Nov 12, 2022 at 8:06pmMetatext