When Elon Musk took control of Twitter in October 2022, many people left Twitter and joined other platforms such as Mastodon. However, the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk wasn't the reason for me deciding to move away from Twitter. In fact, I was considering leaving Twitter before Elon Musk took over.
Why move from Twitter?
I hadn't had any additional followers for a very long time.
My tweets had very few views and responses.
Twitter limits the length of a tweet to 280 characters which can be frustrating for writers. Although, I have seen reports that Elon Musk has said that the length will be increased to 4000 characters!
There have been reports of Twitter labelling links to Substack as 'unsafe' and preventing Substack users from embedding tweets in their posts. (See 'Twitter-Substack Clash' by Benjamin A.).
Notice that the title of this article is Why I am Moving Away from Twitter, rather than Why I have Left Twitter. This is because I haven’t closed my accounts and I am gradually reducing my activity on Twitter.
Where to?
I am already publishing on Substack. Substack is based on a subscription model where followers subscribe to individual writers.
I am also publishing on Medium because:
I had more followers on Medium in three months, than I had in 12 years of being on Twitter.
More community feel - possibly because Medium is a platforms for people who are interested in writing.
My posts get more views and responses on Medium, Mastodon and my own website (MWLS.com) than I do on Twitter.
I like the model that Medium uses where members pay one subscription to access all writers’ stories. Partners get payments depending on the attention their stories get from Medium members.
I decided to get more involved by becoming a Partner and publishing articles that previously were only accessible by my own website’s supporters. You need to have 100 followers and have published at least one story to join the Partner program (see How I Reached 100 Followers).
When you become a Medium member, you can create a Mastodon account with a short username that matches your Medium profile. For example, mine is me.dm/@mike_wills.
Mastodon is a social media platform that’s different from the others. It’s not owned by any one entity. It is a network of servers (or 'instances') that are hosted and moderated by their respective owners.
Posts on Mastodon are federated, meaning that they have the potential to be seen and re-shared by anyone in the entire network. You can also show 'local' posts that are from the same 'instance' as your own.
Although Mastodon - like Medium - has a good community feel, it does have a few weaknesses:
It can seem very confusing when you first join with multiple 'intances' and a 'Fediverse'.
It can be difficult to decide which is the best 'instance' for you.
Although you get a notifcation when a post is 'favourited' (liked) or 'boosted' ('re-tweeted'), you don't see the totals on your profile.
Medium has made it straightforward to open a Mastodon account on their instance, so if you want to create a Mastodon account on me.dm:
Go to medium.com/mastodon.
Confirm your username and create a me.dm password.
Click Create account. Your profile information on Medium will be copied over to your new profile on me.dm.
You can't share your stories on Mastodon - as you can with Twitter - but Medium have said that they are working on this.
While I was writing this article, I did some research using ChatGPT. I think you might be interested in the result:
