A rushed request for pause & reflection on why we use social media.

I have not been able to follow any more accounts on Twitter – from @NeoYokel, my primary, eldest account – for several years because of a limit implemented at some point by Twitter and documented in this help document. Considering the breadth of the mechanic's significance for other users, I have often been compelled to explain this to new followers. Recently, it occurred to me that a handy, brief explainer page might streamline this process, so I created “Why I Didn't Follow You Back” – in both GitHub Gist and Medium post form. Other than a lack of reciprocity in engagement which I can only speculate to occur in the minds of the opposite parties involved in this dynamic, this limitation does not detract from my Twitter life, as I exclusively consume content in Twitter Lists (which I have spoken about extensively, elsewhere.)

A big theme in my 20s has been coming (slowly) to terms with the fact that I built my entire adult social life around a single, centralized social media Web Site. I mentioned this in my Tweetbot 6 review, recently, but – as I also strive to be a more sincere person and spend more time adding value to others’ lives – I’ve concluded that it is the time now to speak as openly and vulnerably as I can about my “Social Media Methodology.” Most of the resulting insights will not be new information, but I continue to encounter greater and greater confusion in the face of my well-meaning behavior online and I have decided to stop disregarding it.

This is not an essay about how to “optimize” your social media use. It is – at least in part – a sort of manifesto against the very idea of designed online behavior beyond simply being considerate in a sense that predates even the spoken word. I, myself, have occupied a position well on the chaotic side of the spectrum. You could say I have been mostly chaotic neutral throughout my 12 years on Twitter thus far, and am actively working toward (and advocating for) chaotic good. Perhaps inevitably, I'm going to wade into some experiences with a few specific social media phenomena which I am particularly reacting to, here.

I do not understand the mentality of Twitter users who behave as if it is an intraweb competition and/or it has value in and of itself.

— ※ David Blue ※ (@NeoYokel) July 13, 2016

Assumptions at bat

1. For the vast majority of mainstream social users, no amount of [insert vague overused marketing jargon noun] will ever result in a substantial accumulation of money/“influence” (which seems to be the diluted zag of “POWER” of the moment.) Those interested in learning about “marketing” should know that no authority on the subject would ever tell you to start with Twitter – this I can say with certainty.

2. Though Twitter was designed upon certain frameworks with certain rules which form quantifiable formulas where they are dependent upon a user's choices/methodology to produce results which we have, indeed, become more adept at predicting with study over time, it was not created as a game to be won. Perhaps more importantly, the “prize” of “winning” in the sense held by those who resist this assumption (notoriety, “influence,” relevance) has continued to prove ultimately worthless (or worse) time and time again throughout the very short history of the cultural element as it exists today.

3. If both 1 and 2 pass scrutiny, the only remaining reasonable prerogatives in one’s social media use is to engage with both strangers and friends in a manner which generally adds value to the lives of all involved.

4. 3 is not only possible – it is easily reproducible. Most of my evidence is centered around my own experiences, but I believe – if I took the time – I would be able to find infinitely many publicly-facing examples.

5. Though I am going to use my own methods to demonstrate 4, neither my ideas nor my behavior are the only means of interacting positively on social media.

I've come to the conclusion fairly recently that I need to become brutally frank about the discrepancies I've observed between others' accounts of their social media use and my own as soon as possible. The great, ambient grousing summoned throughout The Plague from even the first picogeneration to be born directly into The Social Web really challenged my assumptions about its actual purpose in the day-to-day lives of those in the center of the adoption curve. You mean to tell me you've been spending all that societally-alarming time on your phone... On social media services... and you haven't made a single international friend? Or happened across a single niche community surrounding some bizarre practice or knowledge you'd long thought you were entirely alone in? What exactly have you being doing with all that tapping since your toddlerhood, then? I had absolutely no clue how utterly ineffective the vast majority of n̳o̳r̳m̳i̳e̳s̳ still are at using social media for its general purpose in the most abstract sense: “human connection.“

The essential realization toward which (I desperately hope) the largesse of America is being carried by conversations around An Ugly Truth, as well as countless lower-profile essays, features, academic papers, and general shit shooting is that the responsibility for this ignorance rests solely on the platforms who systematically reformed the controls originally handed over by default to early adopters like me. I would love (for both selfish and very humanitarian reasons) to be able to proclaim some precious, one-of-a-kind genius as the sole differentiator between my complete confidence in my ability to design and maintain social software configurations that have kept my online consumption entirely free of unwanted encounters and the amount of regular involuntary bullshit I hear described in the day-to-day online existence of everyone around me. The truth, I suspect, involves my being of the most privileged category of human in Western civilization combined with the group of high school friends who adopted and socialized me. (A story for another permalink, certainly, if not my equivalent of Trick Mirror.)

~~More importantly, perhaps, I don't think I can recall a single instance of sincere malice from within myself toward anyone who'd actually converse with me. On the occasions I have been all huffy and confrontational, I do not remember a single example in which I was unwittingly ejected from a conversation left feeling unsatisfied.~~

Over the past few months, I've started a few Posts for this blog regarding Twitter, its properties, and its recent feature addition frenzy which I'll probably never finish. I finished the first and narrowest one – the aforelinked Tweetbot 6 review – but the (debatably) most important one – highlighting how irresponsibly and distastefully Twitter butchered Periscope and built Spaces atop its technology – would make less and less sense as time goes on. I definitely got caught up in the “death” of the live video streaming service, fueled by my now quite old desire to celebrate it, which I will hopefully accomplish eventually in a very sentimental essay. If I can successfully link them editorially, the subject encompassing Spaces – social audio's “moment” – would also include mention of RSS, “Podcasting” (the term describing the medium,) Spotify, and Clubhouse, inevitably. Instead of counting on my future self entirely, however, I'm going to begin by discussing that last one.

The (‽‽‽th) Social Audio Renaissance

Exactly one month ago, I finally broke into Clubhouse thanks to a random kind stranger on Twitter who preferred not to be named. April 25th was the first time I set eyes on the app – though I could've (and usually would've) looked up screenshots and/or browsed the litter of how tos available, I did not. By this time, I'd accumulated quite a bit of experience with Twitter Spaces – derided universally by tech media as a “Clubhouse clone” – and therefore assumed the original would be “better,” at least in pure feature terms. What I found, however, was even less evidence that anyone building Clubhouse has been/is/intends to be a regular Clubhouse user. Spaces, at least, included five emoji reacts for listeners from the beginning: 💯✊✌️👋😂. Clubhouse's exclusive means of Listener-Host interaction is Hand Raising, which is essentially requesting to speak, even though the hand waving emoji is literally featured in their logo. (The fact that neither have thought to add 🙌 is absolutely inexcusable/inexplicable.)

so clubhouse is #14 on the app store, but only to reserve one’s username. nice. hype.

— ※ David Blue ※ (@NeoYokel) December 31, 2020

In case you weren't aware, I appear to enjoy trying out new social services. My password manager is full of literally thousands of credentials for social media apps/services/startups – most of which have undoubtedly collapsed or been absorbed by a larger entity. Since generating said credentials has become such an easy process, especially, I tend to immediately sign up for an account on just about every one I hear about. (I even have a Parler profile I cannot bear to actually look at.) Generally, I sign up, follow anyone I know from elsewhere if given an account-bridging option, poke around enough to figure out whether or not the service in question could add something to my online existence, and end up leaving for good. Most of these services are not unique in any way, to a perplexing degree. A few – like Pinterest – gain success separately as I give up on trying to integrate them into my life. The miniscule remaining percentage, though, end up becoming a part of my daily existence. The most recent of these dates back to April 2017, when I first discovered Mastodon.

tried joining a twitter space for the first time ever. this shits pretty cool enjoying it a Lot pic.twitter.com/GbJIN8XPc0

— (@0kbps) May 16, 2021

The Feature Story

“Social Audio” did not begin with Clubhouse. Anchor originally launched as a “public radio” app, believe it or not. Extratone's channel was actually the first to be featured in their Music section, once upon a time. Frankly, that happening was the most positive outcome of my social media service accumulation habit. More recently, Stereo launched, describing themselves as “the premier LIVE broadcast social platform that enables people to have and discover real conversations in real time.” Bizarrely, the most legitimate media coverage I could find of Stereo was from Glamour UK, and its author definitely spent less than a day actually using the service. Adam Corolla remains #1 on its earnings leaderboard and its conversation export feature is a personal favorite. The Big WIRED feature on the subject from December of last year does not mention Stereo but lists three other “alternatives:” Wavve, Riffr, and Spoon. (None of which are actually competitors/alternatives. Sorry, Arielle.)

pic.twitter.com/sRCrrdBnSK

— ※ David Blue ※ (@NeoYokel) May 2, 2021

I probably shouldn't proclaim to be an authority on social audio, but I am definitely a veteran. From that context, I must say that Clubhouse is horribly unoriginal – not only in the sense that “successful” business implementations of others', previous ideas tend to be diluted versions of the original, but almost pitifully so. I will commend the app's developers on their somewhat-thorough release notes (even though they can be viewed only when first opening the app after an update instead of in the designated space on the App Store,) but the extent of linkable Clubhouse documentation amounts to eight blog posts and a “Community Guidelines” Notion page. Though I've only been a user for one month, I wonder what the fuck they've been doing since launch, given how sparsely-featured the app is at this moment. There are Notifications, Profiles, and Clubs – the latter of which cannot be created until a user surpasses an unknown threshold of renown(?) on the app. Competent calendar integration may be the service's singular innovation, though support for Outlook has yet to be added. The Big Issue, though, is finding a “talk” to attend that will not drive you utterly insane...

The Grand Delusion

I wrote the assumptions at the beginning of this Post in a single go after a particularly icky Sunday Clubhouse experience out of a deep concern that'd been growing since first exploring the app. The content I've found there is not at all what I expected, to be honest. I've found it almost entirely indecipherable, which makes critique beyond just fucking screaming difficult. The New Yorker's Anna Wiener did a much better job than I could realistically manage in “Clubhouse Feels like a Party:”

There was something pleasant about meandering from conversation to conversation, as if I had walked into my own home to find a conference in full swing. But I also wondered, Why did I let all of these people into my house?

...

It is hard to shake the feeling that everyone on Clubhouse is selling something: a company, a workshop, a show, a book, a brand.

More recently, her publication's nemesis declared “The Clubhouse Party is Over,” but I wouldn't know. None of my friends have ever Tweeted a Clubhouse link (determinable via this Twitter search.) Very few of the tech industry celebrities I follow have, either – pretty much just Chris Messina and Jason Calacanis. This is noteworthy because I believe my list of followed accounts on Twitter to be particularly diverse. I actively followed accounts across my various interests from ages 15-25 (when I hit my follow limit) and basically never unfollowed anyone. I would imagine there are several accounts within that list which I would be ashamed to be associated with, now, and yet none have shared a Clubhouse link. Reading any further into this observation would require actual data journalism, which I'll leave to the pros. It does prompt the question, though: if nobody I've ever known or been interested in on Twitter is using Clubhouse, who in fuck is?

Frankly, I do not understand the business incentive behind the massive duplication of other software/services defining featuresets of late. I see that Instagram stories have eclipsed Snapchat's in terms of sheer user count, but I do not understand why its leaders would choose to fuck their legacy by such blatant idea theft, much less why Twitter, Facebook, Patreon and even fucking LinkedIn have implemented nearly-identical featuresets. Though I know Ben Thompson's word on these matters should be easily digestible, I haven't been able to actually take a bite. For the End User, especially, I cannot even begin to conceive of what the leaders behind these decisions imagine the day-to-day experience of the average social media user looks like in the near future. How many apps am I going to cycle through to get a single story-type piece of content satisfactorily shared? Personally, I currently use three, and sharing a single bit individually across all of them one-by-one (since the current state of APIs is not conducive to consumer-targeted mass-sharing tools) makes me feel utterly insane.

My lack of understanding would be meaningless if it were not so widely shared among my peers – young, brilliant, multifaceted, and distinctly original creators who (in large part) make stuff on the internet full-time. They are who I'd actually plan ahead to hear from in a live broadcast setting like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces, but Twitch seems to do just fine. For audio broadcasts, specifically, the hip, fresh sources which come to mind are all distinctly Open Web: Datafruits.fm, Solarpunk.cool, Poolside.fm, and my Mastodon friend Vanta's stream. The potential of the term “social audio” is truly being explored by projects like Rave.DJ – a homegrown, Patreon-funded service for sharing mixes/mashups. On a smaller scale, the sky is the limit for Whyp.it as a pure audio playback/annotation tool for creators (as developed by Brad Varol, whom I interviewed in March.)

Compared to these, most of Clubhouse's communities seem bleak at best. As I may or may not get around to arguing thoroughly about Twitter Spaces, these services' fundamental, near-complete disinterest in Discovery of new voices and their subsequent servitude to only their most popular users should be extremely worrying for us all – including those who benefit most.

The Consequences of Strategy

I have more than my fair share of stories and peeves about dating apps. On several occasions, for instance, I have corrected those who cite Tinder as the origin of the directional swiping interface, explaining that it was actually the now-defunct service Hot or Not who did so some 15 years ago. (Why on Earth I am compelled to do so, nobody knows. Not even God.) Somehow, though, I think most of us can agree that Tinder is the least shitty of the explicitly hookup-ish spectrum of the genre. Or at least, I thought so, until I happened to spy the “Photo Tip” embedded above beneath a preview of my profile on the iOS app.

The innocuousness of this advice, which surely would not be dispensed in any other context without immediately screaming malice, has been on my mind ever since. It is not the devil who tells you to make sure a passing potential match doesn't immediately learn you have children, but the Marketing Man. (Yes, they are distinct. I would explicitly discourage that particular sort of demonization, mostly because it has proven completely ineffective as cultural critique.) I am in no position to relevantly explore the topic of Society & Sex, generally, other than to insist that most people on Tinder in my area, at least, are not looking to leverage it for the dick. They are looking for dates, and a good many are working class single mothers. To be clear, I’m not trying to suggest anyone in this demographic would be “fooled” by such a suggestion. Offended, perhaps, and/or activated in such a way that would lead to them replacing all of their profile’s pictures with photos of just their children. Regardless, this social group defined by a distinct lack of free time, if nothing else, represents an antithesis to the practice of optimizing one’s swipe ratio.

I think I’ll stop there with this Chapter of David Blue’s Tech ~~Gripes~~ Grapes and pledge to arrive back again exclusively through haphazard/unintentional means, if I ever do.

Discuss...

#media #social

Premium desktop Mastodon clients incoming?

Since you last heard from us, the federated social network Mastodon has scaled tremendously in usership and steadily grown technologically into an incredibly robust and dynamic platform. Perhaps inevitably, Eugen Rochko and his gaggle of open source developers have continued to embarrass the living fuck out of Twitter's team – at least for those who've continued to pay attention (i.e. those of us whose sense of aspiration has yet to perish.)

I planned on getting ahead of an innovative wake in iOS development by watching closely for the first “premium” Mastodon clients to come out, which I suspected (quite correctly) would carry the first substantial risk-taking on the part of plucky social apps to be seen on the goddamned App Store in what felt like eternity. Unfortunately, I've ended up far too deep in screenshots/insights from Toot! and Mast, creating a bit of an overwhelming obstacle in comparing and/or reviewing the two without sinking deep in my regular, pretentious hole. (Though both of them are absolutely gorgeous, fascinating, and impressive projects which you should invest in and follow if you're interested in the future of federated social whatsoever.)

That said... I'd like only to mention and briefly demonstrate the first premium desktop Mastodon client, Mastonaut, which I had the privilege of experiencing momentarily last night.

In the interest of brevity (and because I was unable to continue fucking around for any length of time,) I'll just list some observations:

• The entire GUI experience is distinctly uncluttered (or perhaps barren, depending on your subjective desires from this sort of thing,) but duplicates dearest TweetBot's functionality impressively well considering its age as an independently-developed product.
• Keyboard shortcuts! Fuck me, God.
• I love the live-updated instance directory search (above) as a second landing for first-time users.
• Though I did actually have to repeat the first-time login process after freezing and subsequently force-quitting Mastonaut, I think you'll probably place the blame on my own immediate and inpatient window management mania considering how smoothly it all went the second time around.

To be honest, Bear, Spark, and recent other beautiful Mac applications beckon me to buy or hack myself into MacOS again. If I have time in the near future, I'll show you why.

Discuss...

#software #social

On Win­dows XP bal­lot day, I spent my beat­nik-ass time mar­veling at the (seem­ing­ly) abrupt avail­abil­i­ty of some gen­uine­ly inno­v­a­tive social apps on the Apple App Store for the first time since iOS 7(?) Of course, I am aware that rea­son­able peo­ple would regard a “sneak peek,” NDA-vio­lat­ing, per­fect­ly Adobe Pre­miered app review to be pret­ty fuck­ing lame, and I won’t dis­pute any accu­sa­tions to the tune of “just an insane white guy with a Word­Press site,” but I still believe it’s impor­tant to talk about soft­ware espe­cial­ly because vir­tu­al­ly every­one uses it (as opposed to qui­et­ing down just when these apps and the peo­ple who make them attain the most advan­ta­geous pos­si­ble posi­tion to fuck the whole world.)

That said, I’m going to keep this as brief and unre­vi­sion­ist as I can: Tweetbot’s lat­est iter­a­tion may actu­al­ly jus­ti­fy the ded­i­cat­ed sub­red­dit I’ve just dis­cov­ered! (Reddit’s the last place any­one wants to talk about apps, I guess.) I’ve com­plained at length about Twitter’s increas­ing­ly hos­tile (but jus­ti­fied, sortof) treat­ment of its once aston­ish­ing­ly diverse land­scape of third-par­ty clients and tools, yet I’d hon­est­ly grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly in accept­ing that the dynam­ic would nev­er again see the pow­er of the world’s most cash-stuffed com­pa­nies deliv­ered into the sweaty hands of small, kooky one and two-man teams, and it nev­er would’ve occurred to me that Tweet­bot was still around — much less get­ting ready to update its trusty old app with a release that would sud­den­ly make it clear­ly more sta­ble and bet­ter-look­ing than its last com­peti­tor: the Native Fuck, itself, which has also under­gone sig­nif­i­cant cos­met­ic surgery, recent­ly. Name­ly, they moved the one fuck­ing but­ton that’s giv­en the app a usabil­i­ty pre­mi­um over its mobile web-based low-rent clone.

“The com­pose but­ton has been moved to the bot­tom right-hand cor­ner and “floats” as users scroll down their time­line. That means the but­ton is always avail­able to quick­ly send a tweet when the mood strikes.”

Yeah okay, Matt.

We’ve got a shiny, new com­pose but­ton to unveil on Twit­ter for iOS! Eas­i­er than ever to use, the float­ing icon is promi­nent­ly dis­played and per­fect for one-hand­ed scrolling and Tweet com­pos­ing. Pro tip: Press and hold the icon to access your drafts, pho­tos, and the GIF gallery. -@Twit­terSup­port

Twit­ter Sup­port is no @Cher, yeah, but it seems strange that less than a thou­sand of Twitter’s more than 300 mil­lion month­ly users would both­er to engage with the announce­ment of a sig­nif­i­cant fun­da­men­tal change to its infra­struc­ture. Imag­ine if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment announced via White House press con­fer­ence that every stop­light in the Unit­ed States was going to have its yel­low light removed to “stream­line work­flow” with­out any fur­ther expla­na­tion, yet only 1000 total Amer­i­cans even both­ered to tune in to the tele­vi­sion cov­er­age across all the news net­works. It’d be strange, yeah? Well, y’all are using Twit­ter more than you’re dri­ving, I’ll bet. Next time, get out and vote on my Twit­ter poll, you fascist!

In my Twit­ter glo­ry days — that is, when I used to spend the entire­ty of every one of my com­mu­ni­ty col­lege class­es Tweet­ing from my phone — there was a healthy offer­ing of third-par­ty clients on both mobile and desk­top that filled the eng­lish of the era’s soft­ware media with an absolute­ly bar­bar­ic brand-beat­en pile of lin­guis­tic Twit­trash. After Twin­kle — one of the ear­li­est and ugli­est ways to use Twit­ter ever — you’d have to choose between Twit­pic, Tweet­deck, Twit­ter­counter, Twit­ter­feed, Twhirl, Twit­turly, Twt­poll, Retweet­ist, Tweepler, Hel­lotxt, Twit­dom, Tweetscan, Tweet­burn­er, Tweet­vi­sor, Twit­ter­vi­sion, Twibs, Twistori, and Twit­bin. These are just a few I picked up from a 10-year-old TechCrunch report list­ing the top 21 Twit­ter appli­ca­tions by traf­fic.

Twibs

Now, I have to stop myself from dig­ging too deep here and attempt­ing some­thing absurd like The His­to­ry of Twit­ter Clients, but the fuck­ing mate­r­i­al is there! I could spend an entire after­noon going through YouTube search­es and gad­get blogs because it brings me back to that time when I lived every day assum­ing these things were going to con­tin­ue to aston­ish for my entire adult­hood. So many incred­i­ble ideas! How­ev­er, I’m going to save them for lat­er and focus on the cream of the crop, so to speak: Twit­terif­ic and Tweet­bot, which has been a long­time favorite of mine. As I said, it was in com­mu­ni­ty col­lege that I first ponied up mon­ey for Tweet­bot 3 on my iPhone 4S sim­ply because the hype over it among app and gad­get nerds was so bonkers that it man­aged to spill over into my life, despite the fact that iOS7 and I were hav­ing seri­ous issues in our mar­riage.

If you trust Mark Wat­son with your life as I do, you’d bet­ter believe that Tweet­bot has been “a scream­er” since its very begin­ning, when it pio­neered the Pre­mi­um Poweruser seg­ment, for which a demo­graph­ic appar­ent­ly still exists. It was fast, yet always notice­ably smoother than the native app, just as the newest release is today. I must point out, though, that the blog­gers and YouTu­bers who’ve insist­ed that Tweet­bot or Twit­ter­rif­ic or any oth­er pre­mi­um app could replace the native Twit­ter app entire­ly on iPhone even before they were stripped of a most live/push func­tion­al­i­ty (which I’ll come back around to in just a moment,) are undoubt­ed­ly lying to them­selves — as good as they got, they nev­er over­took Twitter’s own app in imme­di­a­cy terms, which is almost inevitably going to present fun­da­men­tal deter­rence on the part of the active Twit­ter user who intends to rid them­selves of the default pedes­tri­an avenue of admin­is­tra­tion. Tweet­bot solved a lot of things, it real­ly is daft when it comes to noti­fi­ca­tions. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if they came a few hun­dred sec­onds late — it’s that they’re nev­er pre­dictably or con­sis­tent­ly so, which sev­ers entire­ly the human per­cep­tion of engaged plugged-in-ness, if you will. It’s the same phe­nom­e­na Chuck Kloster­man explores best in the con­text of DVRing live sports to watch lat­er.

It’s dif­fi­cult to project fic­tion­al sce­nar­ios that are more oblique and unex­pect­ed than the cra­zi­est moments from real­i­ty. We all under­stand this. And that under­stand­ing is at the core of the human attrac­tion to live­ness. We don’t crave live sport­ing events because we need imme­di­a­cy; we crave them because they rep­re­sent those (increas­ing­ly rare) cir­cum­stances in which the entire spec­trum of pos­si­bil­i­ty is in play. -“Space, Time, and DVR Mechan­ics” by Chuck Kloster­man

Tweet­bot is unques­tion­ably a more thor­ough envi­ron­ment in which to explore Twit­ter than any oth­er third par­ty client, but it can’t do the live thing. (Please do com­plain to Twit­ter, Inc. about the API sit­u­a­tion if you’re so inclined, though.) All I’m try­ing to say is, there is no fuck­ing rea­son you’d delete the Twit­ter app — hide it away in a fold­er and nev­er ever open it again if it dis­gusts you so, but leave its noti­fi­ca­tions set­tings on so that it can keep itself busy in there. Now that is a smart work­flow! In fact, it was mine! And it did work for such a long time that you’d prob­a­bly for­get about the arrange­ment in no time were there not the occa­sion­al obvi­ous dis­crep­an­cies between Tweetbot’s Mention’s tab and the native app’s instant noti­fi­ca­tions. There has nev­er been — nor will there be, I think — a client for Twit­ter that can replace some use of its own prop­er­ties.

I think Tweet­bot 3 made me into my own ridicu­lous equiv­a­lent of a “poweruser.” Things are a lit­tle hazy now, but I know that I depart­ed my main Twit­ter account just before the app’s release, and I didn’t come back until 2015. I was going to school in the same old mall build­ing that housed the tool store in which I was also work­ing in full-time, which is sure­ly the only expla­na­tion for the shame­less­ness I demon­strat­ed in bring­ing a wire­less Apple Blue­tooth key­board to my class­es and plac­ing it behind the phone on what­ev­er sur­face was in front of me so that I could lean for­ward and type into iOS with my nose damned near touch­ing the screen. Strange­ly, I was not able to ver­i­fy when Blue­tooth key­board sup­port was added to iOS, but we’re going to con­clude for the sake of con­ve­nience that it was first includ­ed in the imme­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor to the iPhone 4S I was using then.

The cognoscen­ti have been on Twit­ter for years now. Stephen Fry, the web service’s patron saint — in Britain at least, joined in 2008. How­ev­er, it wasn’t until ear­ly 2009, xsome­where around the time that Fry tweet­ed while stuck in a lift, that the ser­vice went tru­ly main­stream. Men­tions of Twit­ter, usu­al­ly involv­ing celebri­ties, could be found in news­pa­pers and on break­fast tele­vi­sion. -“Top 10 tech­nol­o­gy high­lights of 2009 ” | The Telegraph

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve already seen the demos and skimmed reviews at least. You should know by now whether or not Tweet­bot 5 is worth it to you in pure­ly func­tion­al terms, but I think we should all acknowl­edge that this release of Tweet­bot is like­ly the last com­pet­i­tive third-par­ty Twit­ter app for iOS. The mess that is Twit­ter, Inc. has made clear this year that it intends to pri­or­i­tize its own clients over main­tain­ing the APIs nec­es­sary for oth­ers to receive push noti­fi­ca­tions. And when I say “its own,” I’m also refer­ring to our dear­est Tweet­Deck, which they in fact absorbed. From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, it makes sense: only “six mil­lion App Store and Google Play users installed the top five third-par­ty Twit­ter clients between Jan­u­ary 2014 and July 2018,” accord­ing to TechCrunch. I nev­er expect­ed to see Tweet­bot on the App Store charts again, nor would I have con­sid­ered that Echophon, Tweet­Cast­er or Twit­ter­rif­ic would have been left avail­able. They’re on the App Store, at least, and I can con­firm that they all tech­ni­cal­ly still work, but it’s safe to say they’re show­ing their fuck­ing age. Tweet­bot and Twit­ter­rif­ic, though, are not just satel­lite prod­ucts of the plat­form — they lit­er­al­ly built it. These two are the poles that have spent Twitter’s life­time thus far demon­strat­ing for the com­pa­ny and its user­base their own respec­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of a mobile social appli­ca­tion. Today, they are unit­ed — along with Talon and Tweet­ings — in a plea for con­tin­ued access to the plat­form they helped estab­lish on behalf of Twit­ter users and devel­op­ers around the world.

Both Tweet­bot and Twit­ter­rif­ic are in their 5th ver­sions, and nei­ther has actu­al­ly changed much since iOS 7. (Twit­ter­rif­ic appears to still be in the same ver­sion num­ber.) Fac­ing the grow­ing walls around the ser­vice, one strug­gles to imag­ine them sur­viv­ing more than one or two iOS releas­es, but I’ve been wrong before. (In fact, I dis­cov­ered yes­ter­day that Look­book is still around some­how.) By the time iOS 7 came around, the new native Twit­ter app still looked fuck­ing ter­ri­ble. When Tap­bots released Tweet­bot 3, every­thing about its visu­al expe­ri­ence was beyond any­thing we’d seen on the iPhone before and its effec­tive­ness as a Twit­ter tool was imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able in con­trast with even Jack’s brand-new app and mobile web expe­ri­ence. The ani­ma­tions were taste­ful and smooth and the “pro user” label on Tapbot’s demo­graph­ic allowed them to ful­ly explore the func­tion­al­i­ty of iPhone’s ges­tures sep­a­rate any bond with the hypo­thet­i­cal­ly least-capa­ble user.

This is a dynam­ic which I am appar­ent­ly unable to avoid across just about all of my sub­jects — includ­ing dig­i­tal media — so you may take it as gen­er­al­ly unrea­son­able or extreme, but I’m near­ly as tired of being treat­ed as an idiot user as I am an idiot read­er. Read­abil­i­ty is to Usabil­i­ty, etc. It’s espe­cial­ly aggra­vat­ing when I could do so much more if devel­op­ers would just assume I’m capa­ble of any knowl­edge acqui­si­tion or intel­lec­tu­al growth what­so­ev­er. Except for a few left­over key­board short­cuts, the native Twit­ter app’s only func­tion are the most obvi­ous to engage with, as per the high­est pos­si­ble stan­dards of use, which would make per­fect sense if it was paired with com­pe­tent invest­ments in Acces­si­bil­i­ty, but Twit­ter always appears to detest the sub­ject, even while qui­et­ly putting in some of the work. Thanks to Mastodon’s explic­it and vis­i­ble acknowl­edge­ment of acces­si­bil­i­ty by way of just one young Ger­man man and a vol­un­teer team, we cer­tain­ly know it’s not because it’s an expen­sive one at all. (The “if Mastodon can do it than Twit­ter can def­i­nite­ly fuck­ing do it” argu­ment can be expand­ed almost with­out lim­it.)

Some­where out there is a social media man­ag­er using a screen read­er whose pro­fes­sion­al­ism has been under­mined by the belief that the update is avail­able to every­one. We deserve equal access to the tools our peers take for grant­ed, and the secu­ri­ty to know that we will be able to do our jobs tomor­row regard­less of updates. -Kit Englard for The Out­line

I would like to com­mend myself now for mak­ing it this far with­out men­tion­ing Lists — a sub­ject which I’ve already Tweet­ed and writ­ten about exten­sive­ly — but this time, I have the won­drous bless­ing of two pre­miere mobile soft­ware com­pa­nies who rec­og­nized the poten­tial pow­er in list func­tion­al­i­ty to dis­pel or avoid most of the inher­ent risks assigned to the usage of a social net­work like Twit­ter and bet heav­i­ly on it. Nei­ther can be uti­lized to the fullest with­out lists and wouldn’t it be such a shame to not get your money’s worth? Tap­bots expand­ed their cura­tive abil­i­ty tremen­dous­ly by adding cus­tomiz­able fil­ters to any time­line in Tweet­bot, allow­ing the user to infi­nite­ly manip­u­late incom­ing posts with any com­bi­na­tion of every vari­able sup­port­ed by the core Twit­ter code itself. With­in a mat­ter of sec­onds, you could cre­ate a fil­ter that will exclude all Tweets except for those from unver­i­fied accounts that men­tion “blimps” and include a media attach­ment and apply this fil­ter to any of the app’s time­line views — includ­ing Home, Men­tions, Pro­file (your own Tweets,) your Favorites, and your Search­es — every­thing but your Direct Mes­sages can be sort­ed this way.

Tweet­Bot and I accom­plished a lot of sort­ing togeth­er, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me had it not crept to #1 Paid Social App again a few weeks ago that per­haps my bias towards Twit­ter lists could be entire­ly attrib­uted to my ear­ly use of Tweet­Bot and Twit­ter­rif­ic, which allowed me to amass a Fol­low­ing count of over 5000 with­out phys­i­cal­ly per­ish­ing or men­tal­ly dis­in­te­grat­ing to the point of unde­ni­able insan­i­ty. How­ev­er, by the time Tweet­Bot 4 was released in 2015, it had long since swapped places with the native app with­in my iPhone’s home­screens and was only used when I felt par­tic­u­lar­ly like Tweet­storm­ing from a sta­tion­ary sit­u­a­tion. From my wire­less Apple Key­board, this meant Cmd (⌘)-N to com­pose a Tweet and ⌘-Enter to send it.

Today — in Tweet­bot 5 — this con­tin­ues to be a tried-and-true method of Tweet­ing Tweets on Twit­ter, smooth­ly and effi­cient­ly, as always. Return­ing to Ye Olde Alter­na­tive in 2018 yields both famil­iar and new­ly-imple­ment­ed goods: ani­ma­tion and audio noti­fi­ca­tions are car­ried over and/or updat­ed as need­ed to main­tain a flu­id and fresh expe­ri­ence. The abil­i­ty to switch between its intel­li­gent­ly-cho­sen col­or themes with a two-fin­gered ver­ti­cal swipe, alone will be jus­ti­fi­ca­tion enough for many users like myself to hand over anoth­er $4.99 to the Tap­bots devel­op­ers who’ve man­aged against all odds to one-up Twitter’s own mobile app devel­op­ment one last time. Over any oth­er alter­na­tive app, Tweet­bot 5 retains the robust qual­i­ties nec­es­sary to achieve #1 Paid Social App sta­tus on the App Store despite its new API shack­les.

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