Despite the fact that I've been unhappy with Twitter's business strategy and various "Dick" moves, the end result has been great. The main effect on me has been a reduce usage of their service. And although I signed on for App.net [https://join.app.net/] early on, my Twitter usage was not merely replaced by the new service. There are various reasons for this. Moving to a new house, a new job, and a long trip. But mostly, it's been a continual desire to use Twitter less. I'm thankful…
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My life changed on April 9, 2010. At least, my work life did. And when you own your own business, your work life tends to bleed — heavily — into every aspect of your life. So when I received the announcement early on a Friday evening that Twitter had purchased atebits [https://chrisbowler.com/p/460d5fbd-530e-463e-9ab4-cdb0c6d01f8a/], it was a punch to the gut. Backstory Let me go back one year, to April of 2009. Tweetie on the iPhone was a smashing success. I'd read the likes of Gruber sing its…
The web is the backbone of so much of what we do, the pipeline, but how we access it changes so quickly. The various services that make use of this pipeline offer us a myriad of choices to ‘plug in’, and it can be hard to find the right balance that enables us to partake, yet not be inundated. The intake Shawn Blanc recently posted an article comparing RSS and Twitter [http://shawnblanc.net/2011/06/rss-v-twitter/] that resonated with me. Through a series of good points, he illustrates how the n…
Like Ben Brooks [http://twitter.com/benjaminbrooks], I've long had some thoughts about Twittiquette rolling around in my head. Ben expressed some thoughts [http://brooksreview.net/2011/05/follow/] this morning on the service and how he thinks people should react when they are followed or unfollowed by others. It's an interesting subject as we all react towards these actions differently. But I try to keep a few things on my mind. Don't take it personally At some point, you're going to find out…
There was a chunk of time in my childhood — maybe as long as two years — where every kid at school was completely focused on marbles. Having first persuaded our parents to buy us each a large bag of them, the school yard was daily transformed into a huge marble tournament. I can't remember all the specifics of the games (dropsies rings a bell), but the overall sense of building a collection is still vivid. Every game in which you bested your opponent, you got to keep his or her marble. You save…
Aaron Mahnke shared some thoughts [http://www.aaronmahnke.com/post/3702200164] on how the Internet and social media have improved our relationships, rather than causing people to become increasingly isolated. I'm giving his piece a large dose of summarization in saying that, but it's the essence of what I took away the post. > But then something happened. People started to question technology. They started pushing it in a new direction. And for all the snake oil salesmen and plethora of “gurus…
When it comes to Twitter, 2010 personally left me with a bad taste in my mouth. When the company purchased Loren Brichter's atebits [http://www.atebits.com/] — and programming skills — I was probably affected more than most people because of our ads in Tweetie for Mac. Other 3rd party Twitter client developers aside. I could certainly understand Loren's decision and hold no hard feelings towards him. But the few communications I had with the team at Twitter left me wishing there was a little mo…