I flipped the switch yesterday on my one remaining Twitter account, @tonzylstra, my original one. I registered in December 2006, so the account didn’t quite make it to 18 years. My Mastodon activity started spring 2017, so let’s see where that will be 11 years down the road.
I had stopped using my Twitter account (posted a redirect to my Mastodon account in 2018) and a year ago deleted the other ones I had (including that of my company), but held on to this one for nostalgia I think. Because even if at the end of 2006 I felt I was late to Twitter (I was an avid Jaiku user, a European better alternative that got acquired and was immediately killed by Google), my user ID and first (SMS!) message were well within the early phase of Twitter.
Last time I looked at my following timeline even that had deteriorated. Bad enough certainly to overcome any lingering nostalgia.
My user ID is number 59923, registered on Tuesday December 12th, 2006. Judging by the time, 10:36am, I registered during my regular 10:30 coffee break.
One minute later I posted my first message. It had ID 994313, so my Tweet was just within the first million messages on Twitter
Me in Everyone’s So Nice Around Here! (Best Before: See Back), after Musk acquired Twitter in November 2022.
A last look over the shoulder
Gone.
@ton Tja. Wat maakte je me enthousiast in 2008 en wat heb ik er ontzettend veel geleerd en plezier gehad Ton. Time flies.
@ton To this day, I’m not sure what the best #strategy is for managing all my old #Twitter accounts. They automatically share what I originally post on #Mastodon and link to Mastodon in every single post. This still brings new followers here, which continues to prevent me from quitting Twitter.
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@gerrit if it brings people to your stream here then that’s a net benefit I think. I only ever used it for conversation not for audience and that has been gone for a number of years. So it was just the place holder. And I suppose there’s little risk of someone wanting to impersonate my old account now I released the handle.
@ton And since #XTwitter doesn’t seem to like that, it has the “practical” side effect that the accounts are successively being #suspended, including my oldest and personal one: https://x.com/eicker – And somehow, it even feels better than shutting them down myself; including the advantage that (for now) no one else can use them.
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