I've been thinking about social media quite a lot lately.

It came to a head last month with a wonderful post* from Thierry (btw if you're in tech and not following Thierry, I recommend you fix that ASAP!).

It resonated with me because:

I was also lamenting pre-takeover Twitter
I wasn't exactly sure what I was missing
I was surprised at how much time I was spending on LinkedIn because it seemed... cool**

What helped me figure this out was a chat with my pal Chris.

Chris pointed out that on Twitter, he didn't have to think too hard about what things he wanted to talk about. While he predominantly tweeted about testing with other testing peers (see what I did there, Chris?***), that wasn't all he tweeted about. He put it like this:

"I could be my whole self on Twitter."

Oooooooh boy! Nailed it 🎯

That's what was bugging me. I don't have anywhere I can engage with people on allTheThings. I joined because of Software Testing Twitter, but I stayed because of...

Content Creation Twitter (which turned out to be YouTube Twitter, Copywriting Twitter, Podcast Twitter, and more!)
Coaching Twitter
F1 Twitter
Liverpool FC Twitter
Money Twitter (which turned out to be Solopreneur Twitter, Entrepreneurship Twitter, Investment Twitter, Property Twitter, Online Biz Twitter, and more!)
Software Development Twitter (which led me to Cybersecurity Twitter, Systems Thinking Twitter, Design Twitter, Public Speaking Twitter and more!)
Old-school Hip-Hop Twitter

...and I could go on (but I've been doing enough "going on" in this post already 😅! Please hang in there 🙏🏾)

That presented a new dilemma.

What do I do about it?!

I don't know about you but I feel like LinkedIn is NOT the place to talk about anyOrAllOfTheThings and I'm mostly ok with that i.e. there's nooooooo way I'm suggesting we turn LinkedIn into another Twitter, Facebook, Reddit or anything else (Bloody hell 😳).

I have at least two options as I see it:

Be more proactive on this post post-Takeover Twitter/X and make new friends
Post about more topics I'm interested in here on LinkedIn

The answer is clear.

Both!

So what does that mean going forwards?

LinkedIn: You can expect my usual software quality and coaching posts with a light sprinkling of topics like copywriting and entrepreneurship too. A tasty garnish if you will.

Twitter/X: I need to remember the social part of social media and get more involved again. There are still people I can vibe with. I just need to be more... socialable.

And that's that.

Thanks for attending my Ted talk 😅

* Go and read Thierry's post that got me thinking about all this in the first place!

** That last bullet isn't something I thought I'd ever say 🤯

*** Chris is a co-host of The Testing Peers podcast and co-organiser of PeerCon a new and excellent Software Testing Conference. Now you see what I did there too I hope 😊

What I Miss About Twitter And How I've Decided To Handle It

I've been hideously inactive on Twitter/X lately, and found myself on LinkedIn much more frequently. This is how I figured out why and decided what I'm going to do about it.

What will you write today?