Matthew Lang avatar

Matthew Lang

Family guy and web developer

Crawling back to X?

David Heinemeier Hansson recently posted about X’s appeal.

Everything that happens, everyone who matters, is on X first. Even the most rabid Musk haters come crawling back to this platform when it counts.

— DHH, X

I’m afraid I have to disagree with this.

X was the place I checked first when something happened. It’s definitely the last place I check now. A news website like The Guardian might be where I start if there’s some breaking news story. If it’s tech-related, I’ll go to Hacker News and then possibly The Verge for more information on the story.

As for the “everyone who matters” part, I see X now as nothing more than a platform for technical people. Yip, many friendly people are on there, and they are still posting interesting stuff. Still, the general vibe to me is that it’s an excellent place for those in tech but not much else. For me, it’s become an echo chamber.

So, are others still crawling back to X?

Not for me. I might check my X timeline once a day and bookmark a few things to read later, but that’s the extent of my interaction on X. It’s not the source of good content that it was a few years back. It’s definitely not the platform that counts for everyone.

I think I would like to see more options available when composing posts in Micro.blog. As a default I would like the ability to always show the categories and the cross-posting options. Most of the time I’ll cross-post everything everywhere, but not always.

Trying a new family thing this year. A Christmas movie every Monday night with the family. Tonight’s movie, Arthur Christmas. The boys might be older, but they were still in hysterics watching it. 🎬

Code and coffee session working on my new website this morning was something of a success. Added new jobs to import starred Github repos and liked Instapaper articles to my bookmarks collection. I also added my Micro.blog posts to the homepage.

It was a big week this week for my oldest, as he officially signed to pursue a golf scholarship in the States with FirstPoint USA. He has a lot of work ahead regarding studies, golf and promotion. If the right offer comes through, it would be the start of a life-changing experience for him.

I wish people would return to self-hosted websites, aka blogs. The fact that everyone seems to be publishing their content in newsletters is driving me bananas. I want to stumble upon your content when I am strolling through my favorite bookmarked gardens. Not in my inbox.

— Tina Roth Eisenberg on Threads

Amen. Bonus points for websites that also provide an RSS feed.

The trailer for season 3 of Slow Horses has dropped.

Between this and For All Mankind, my winter television viewing is sorted. Also, it might be time to start reading the Slow Horses books.

Everywhere I go on the web, I still see sites using the old Twitter “bird” branding in images, buttons and links. In fact, I can’t recall if I’ve ever seen the “X” branding being used anywhere other than on X itself.