Good discussion happening on Hacker News about my #GeoCities 1995 post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296103

If you're on Hacker News, I'd appreciate your upvotes (I think this is the first time a Cybercultural post has got to the front page there).

Marshall Kirkpatrick joins Read/WriteWeb in September 2007, which helps us crack the top 20 blogs in the world. The following month, I attend the Web 2.0 Summit and experience the start of hustle culture, through chats with GaryVee and a hungry (and muscly) kiwi entrepreneur. https://cybercultural.com/p/024-readwriteweb-key-hire-hustle-culture/ #InternetHistory #Web20

Unsurprisingly, #Web3 has an astronomical failure rate. 65% of crypto projects have died in 2023, according to this report. It also says that 72% of crypto projects "born in the 2020-2021 (bull run) have died." Not so much 'to the moon' as 'to the morgue'! https://alphaquest.io/blog/dead-coins-report-2024/

Just before I deleted the Substack app from my phone, I saw that Stephen Fry joined Substack today. Oh Stephen…and he was one of the first celebs to join Mastodon too :(

Anyone else?

nostr:npub1924rd0jcf5psd54fckp85r3cf08f2ahx522mxyt0quj4mp035uus97w5ra the choice I've made is to mostly *write* on Mastodon. Admittedly, I still use X extensively to do my job as a journalist and I promote my various pieces of writing there. Maybe the next step for me is to stop posting on X, even if it means less people read my articles. Perhaps I'm a bad person, but I'm not quite ready to do that yet...social media to me is mainly a tool, to both do my job and promote my work. Altho I do use Mastodon to, well, socialize (e.g. sharing my thoughts)

nostr:npub16amvkqtxxxsqk6a5s7f4w3guzrjejw69zy8hnwe6ug6gkcn222ks8wscuf well, personally I don't think either Musk or X is "fascist" -- that's too strong a term and IMHO it's way over-used on all forms of social media. That said, I freely admit I am still using X for pragmatic reasons (my job). I don't like what Musk has done to it and I hope Mastodon (or another fediverse product) eventually usurps it. So that's my position, fwiw.

6/6 As for Bluesky and Threads, I am present on both of those platforms, but it’s “wait and see” in both cases. Bluesky is still in basically a private beta (I have 5 invites currently, but frankly I don’t see much demand for them); until it opens up, I can’t really take it seriously. Threads is similar, as it has promised fediverse support. But, as with Musk and X, I also don’t want to hand control of my socials to one very powerful person (Zuck). So, I’m committed to Mastodon.

5/6 I am encouraged that key tech news platforms, like Techmeme, are already supporting the fediverse — as well as X, but (like me) Techmeme has to keep supporting X, as that’s where much of the news happens or is commented on. Also there are some great apps for Mastodon now (I use Ivory on iOS). Mastodon software also is evolving nicely (see search note above). So all of this leads me to believe that SLOWLY, but surely, the fediverse is making progress.

4/6 Another reason I still (unfortunately) rely on X is that certain core communities are based there. Much of web dev (although there’s also a growing community of web geeks here on Mastodon) and nearly all of the AI app crowd are still based on X. Maybe that will slowly change, but it’ll be in years not months.

3/6 It is good news that Mastodon is rolling out search functionality, incl in the instance I use (.social). I love that the Mastodon project is doing that. However, it will; take quite some time for this to become prevalent, as people basically need to opt-in for search indexing. That’s ok, I have no problem with that approach. Just saying, it’ll still take a long time for Mastodon to become more useful than X, on that account.

2/6 Much as I admire those people who have deleted their X a/cs and now exclusively use Mastodon, I am still finding X/Twitter to be of the most value to my job as a journalist. e.g. my latest article, about Vercel’s AI products, could not have been written without info from X — not to mention I DMed its CEO there, for further info. Plus of course: SEARCH. This is a core part of my daily usage of social media. So, I still need/use X.

1/6 So, how's it going with the Great Migration from X/Twitter? For myself, I now treat Mastodon as my main tool for tooting/tweeting to the world. But I've always been more of a "reader" than a "writer" on social media (i.e. I don't toot every day, but I check social media regularly during each day — mainly for my job as a tech journalist). So a couple of observations about where the Migration stands from my perspective...

I read this and even though it does help humanize Elon Musk (I didn’t realise his eldest child had transitioned), it also reinforces that one megalomaniacal person should NOT own the public conversation. Made me even more pro-fediverse and anti-X. https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-twitter-x-takeover-walter-isaacson-5f553fa

Web3 failed to remake the developer ecosystem, but the emerging LLM app stack is forcing the cloud native era to adapt. I examine its progress. https://thenewstack.io/llm-app-ecosystem-whats-new-and-how-cloud-native-is-adapting/

nostr:npub1sv5flfqurp28w22tsfnz7a5e9zukznuxphqezf725h0pphjupz0qe28tp3 nostr:npub1xrj3t052eyqclk39m85tvffsge35zr3kedkmsf8l6dheq8zrt8rs589q43 disclaimer: I am by no means a legal expert. I just meant the author should be the ultimate copyright holder and it'd be nice for them to have the option to remove their content from any website (including IA).

The latest edition of AI Writer World features my review of Sudowrite, an AI writing tool for authors. Also, as usual, my roundup of the week’s relevant #AI news, opinions and research. https://www.aiwriterworld.com/p/sudowrite-review