Daniel NormanNov 17, 2022
blaine

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. 🧵

Nov 11, 2022 at 11:08pmWeb
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. ❤️🪺
Show threadMitch Effendi (ميتش أفندي)Nov 11, 2022

@blaine I call your era "The o_O era."

Thank you for your work — it defined my 20s, and helped me find my own kind in a new, unfamiliar, and otherwised cloistered city (Pittsburgh). Glad to see that the spirit of this early era lives on here, at Masto.

Show threadChris TrottierNov 11, 2022
@blaine So Blaine, what are you working on nowadays?
Show threadblaineNov 12, 2022
@atomicpoet speed-running the internet with @fission 😅
Show threadChris TrottierNov 12, 2022
@blaine @fission That's very interesting. For the past 5 years, I've been thinking that we need new ways to build online identity -- preferably so that it's nomadic.
Show threadPermagricultureNov 18, 2022

@blaine

Would @fission run over https://reticulum.network/

Reticulum Network

Show threadLord Blood Nov 11, 2022
@blaine @threadunroller
Show threadæva ( 🏳️‍⚧️🏍️ arc )Nov 12, 2022

@blaine this is such a beautiful testament to what could have been — and what will be. I want to think society has learned a lesson from the corruption of capital and the harms of ad-driven design.

Even if only a few of us learned, I’ll cherish that found community.

Show threadAlan Langford 🇨🇦🧤🧊摏Nov 12, 2022

@blaine Will it help you get emotional distance from Twitter if I blame you for wrecking IRC?

If not just ignore me. 😂

Either way thanks for fixing it!

Show threadAurelia Fenderson-Peters 🏳️‍⚧️Nov 12, 2022
@alan @blaine IRC was great as long
Show threadAurelia Fenderson-Peters 🏳️‍⚧️Nov 12, 2022
@alan @blaine the lag got too bad and you had to wait for the server half the channel was on to time out and rejoin. 🤣
Show threadmsw117r22Nov 12, 2022
@blaine thanks for this glimpse into history and for caring so deeply about community. Hope for the future! (from a birdsite user since 2008 - 14 years! it was a good run)
Show threadBaessando por ai!Nov 18, 2022
@msw117r22 @blaine me too! 14 years!
Show threadlesighlepurrNov 12, 2022
@blaine ❤️
Show threadPolychrome Nov 12, 2022
@blaine were your early attempts to make a federated twitter involved with Diaspora / Identi.ca / GNU Social in some way?

Those were the precursors for our current ActivityPub based Fediverse, which Mastodon is a part of.
Welcome - Identi.ca

Show threadblaineNov 12, 2022
@Polychrome yup! The initial Twitter federation code used xmpp pubsub, but when xmpp was abandoned by twitter (the timeline is a bit fuzzy here, tbh), I created webfinger (which was used by ostatus/gnu social and in a slightly different form today by activitypub) as a way to federate identity on the web. 😊
Show threadBaessando por ai!Nov 18, 2022
@blaine what a amazing thread. Thank you for it, your work and vison 🥰
Show threadElahn Danee Nov 19, 2022
@blaine YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Show threadMs AB ☕Nov 19, 2022
@blaine 💚
Show threadSumana HarihareswaraNov 12, 2022
@blaine This analogy made me tear up. Thank you.
Show threadElahn Danee Nov 19, 2022
@brainwane @blaine Me too 🥲
Show threadGem of HopeNov 19, 2022
@blaine that is extremely well put. It IS like Spring, even for me who has never made a social media site.
Show threadKenny  Nov 11, 2022
@blaine It's been a great home for Eagles Nation so far :)
Show threadBraxNov 11, 2022
@blaine Thanks for this talk. I'm a programmer myself and I've always admired the size of Twitter and the complexity that there must be there behind the curtains. (sorry if that sound right in English) I always undestood why you couldn't search old tweets, but later we can! I admire the magnificent infrastructure you guys built. :)
Show threadcolleenNov 12, 2022
@blaine the other day I mentioned on my timeline/post or whatever it’s called on this platform - that this site feels like holding a newborn baby. All promise and potential.
Show threadjrgNov 13, 2022
@blaine It's not succeeding yet. It's taking forever for me to get federated on my one man show server. It needs more relays.
Show threadChris TrottierNov 11, 2022
@blaine I remember this. A lot of devs built on Twitter's API because it looked like you were building the Internet's communications infrastructure. It's too bad execs did a bait-and-switch!
Show threadBob Mottram :debian:Nov 12, 2022
@blaine There was a period of time between about 2012 and 2016 which was very bleak. The original identica was gone and most people had been sucked into Facebook and Twitter. During that time trying to persuade anyone that open federated systems were the way forward was a near impossible task. At that point the fediverse was a small number of holdouts on a few servers.
Show threadNatanael ⚠️Nov 12, 2022
@bob @blaine we're lucky they persisted and kept building. I also followed projects like that, including diaspora and various P2P projects, but most faded out. Fortunately some survived and was ready when we needed them
Show threadshellkr 🇪🇺Nov 12, 2022

@bob @blaine I think Mastodon came timely to pick up those looking for a new home after G+ was abandoned. A lot of the Linux/FOSS crew held out on G+ but was forced away.

I moved away before that (early 2017) as an attempt to be Goolge free. I tried Diaspora before e.t.c.. but nothing really worked until Mastodon came to be.

Mastodon reached critical mass back then and just continued to grow ever since.

Show threadBuzz AndersenNov 12, 2022
@blaine The first Twitter client I tried to write was based on XMPP!
Show threadMickaël RémondNov 12, 2022
@blaine I remember those good old times.
That’s when we met, talking about XMPP (and a bit of Jaiku, a possible partner for federation at that time).
Show threadblaineNov 12, 2022
@mremond I remember well - thank you for your help and insights back then! We've come such a long way, just to arrive not far from the vision that many folks in the XMPP community had way back then. It feels good to see a giant new community take the baton, let's hope it sticks! ❤️
Show threadTom ScottNov 12, 2022
@blaine didn’t you and <sorry can’t remember who> work all night at SG Foocamp (?2008), to federate Twitter and Jaiku via XMPP PubSub?
Show threadblaineNov 12, 2022
@derivadow yup! @ralphm who is a wonderful and kind person, and also here! 😊
Show threadTom ScottNov 12, 2022

@blaine @ralphm of course! Sorry Ralph, I can only blame my failing memory.

That whole incident has stuck with me. Hard to think of that sort of thing being possible now.

Show threadRalph MeijerNov 12, 2022
@derivadow @blaine No worries! Also, the problem never really was technology.
Show threadTom ScottNov 12, 2022
@ralphm @blaine that’s true for so much in life! What I found cool was the fact you could just make the change to these global services (without approval)
Show threadDan YorkNov 15, 2022

@blaine THANK YOU for all you did in those early days of Twitter! I joined as a user in 2006 and worked for a voice-over-IP (VoIP) company at the time. We came to see great promise in Twitter as this “connective messaging tissue” between systems and people. With the open APIs (and encouragement of developers) we were wiring up everything into Twitter.

It was awesome! Twitter was this chance to interconnect everything in a new way.

And then.. the pivot to advertising.. 🙁🤯

Show threadblaineNov 15, 2022
@danyork 🙏🙏❤️ Glad you're still here! (It's happening! 🎉)
Show threadAral BalkanNov 18, 2022
@blaine It was never your fault. A shopping mall can never become a park.
Show threadAlasdair AllanNov 18, 2022
@blaine I've thought for a while that the failure to follow through with annotations was perhaps the first sign of rot. Twitter could have become the backbone network. Not just for moving data, but for moving apps. With an appropriately custom client, you could have attached small applications to a tweet. Building something like that is really hard, a classic social network chicken and egg proposition. But Twitter already had the users and, at the time, an army of third-party developers.
Show threadTC Won't Give In To LiesNov 18, 2022

@blaine
“Corrupted by Capital” would be a great name for a band

…or an American history textbook.

Show threadElahn Danee Nov 19, 2022
@blaine Damn… that last sentence…
Show threadJacek RNov 12, 2022
@blaine I’m an amateur, so forgive me, pls. But since you’re asking: your expertise and your vision are not gone. What’s gone is the TT era. It’s time to move on. In other words: your creativity is not dependent on the existence of TT. Allow yourself to descend deeper, on that visceral ladder.
Show threadmcneelyNov 18, 2022
@blaine when you think about it like that it's no surprise that Twitter the idea took off right when cell phones started becoming ubiquitous
Show threadWael EskandarNov 20, 2022

@blaine You talk about it like we talk about the revolution in Egypt, not sure how we can let it go: )

I enjoyed the thread, thanks for that.

Show threadMirageeNov 12, 2022
@blaine I had no intention of joining Twitter, but in 2011, I had a 3G iPad and an AT&T Hotspot. The ONLY thing I could get on the Internet was Twitter! By the time I had a better connection to the Internet, I was hooked. Twitter has been the best companion I have had in a long time (even though, lately, I had to Block a lot of other participants.)
Show threadLyndall LeyNov 14, 2022
@blaine I came properly to Twitter during the 2011 Egyptian revolution - thank you
Show threadbigstrongboyNov 11, 2022
@blaine my sneakers used to hurt my feet but then i saw this infographic that said if you have a "high instep" you should lace them this special way. i tried it and my feet didn't hurt any more. if the internet had never been invented i would probably have sort feet still. my vision is that one day everyone will have feet that don't hurt.
Show threadBill ChildersNov 11, 2022
@blaine Thanks for caring about Twitter - and the fediverse, and for contributing to all of *this* stuff. Twitter's been a big part of my life - I've met a whole bunch of awesome people there. Thank you for helping make that happen.
Show threadJoey Van DeurzenNov 11, 2022
@blaine Twitter is how I got interested in tech more deeply. It’s how I got my internship on a U.S. Senate Campaign. And it’s how I was able to run for Wisconsin State Assembly as a 20 year old. I’m not sure how I’m feeling about it’s seemingly inevitable death, but I’m so thankful for all the opportunities it opened up for me.
Show thread@reiver ⊼ (Charles) Nov 11, 2022

@blaine

FWIW, I love Twitter.

Yeah, it has changed over time.
And I don't like all the changes.

But it is still one of my favorites.

Part of why I like the user-experience of Mastodon is that it is Twitter-like.

I also have friends — that the only reason we are friends is that we chatted on Twitter first.

For a long time — it was the best source for me to find interesting stuff to read or watch. But, of course, you have to follow people who post on things you are interested in.