What is going on with Social Media, for this ‘Oracle guy’

I felt compelled to spend a few minutes, talking out loud, about what is going on in the tech and data social communities.

For more than a decade, there was a vibrant, fun, engaging tech community hosted on Twitter, now known as ‘X.’

I jumped right in, at the urging of others. “Hey Jeff, you gotta join Twitter!” By the way, thanks Andy and Brent for doing that, my life and career have been turbocharged because of that advice! And I in return, I also encouraged others to join Twitter!

I’ve utilized X’s platform, a lot. I’ve tweeted 130,000+ tweets, I’ve created 4 accounts with a following of about 50,000 people (or bots?), and have been on the platform nearly every day for more years than I care to count.

Hell, I’ve even blogged about Twitter.

There’s been changes, lots of changes.

Maybe the most significant change for me is that Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it, has either been politicized or associated with politics due to the actual or perceived policies of former and current management.

Look, I’m not against changes, and I realize the platform needs to make money. But there’s no debating the fact that X feels weirder or significantly different than Twitter used to. This is a subjective statement, and this is my blog, and that’s how I feel about the current situation.

And these changes have led to a threatened, but as of yet to be realized, abandonment of Twitter for ‘something better.’ Or, at least going ‘somewhere not Twitter.’

So where would that be?

At first that was Mastodon

Think Twitter, but more complicated. Make sure you join the right server! Make sure your server is running the right version of Mastodon! Make sure you’re federated!

What???

Exactly.

And whilst I tried that for awhile, I never saw any real technical engagement or communities building around Oracle, data, or even tech!

What I did observe was most threads were around talking down on Twitter, and the people that run Twitter.

I left after a month or two.

Then came BlueSky

I’m there now. I’ve noticed recently that the number of people joining from our ‘Oracle universe’ is growing a bit now.

BlueSky is in beta, so requires an invite. I get them from time to time, feel free to drop a comment and ask for one.

BlueSky is basically a literal clone of Twitter, but with fewer features. No animated gifs, but also fewer trolls and bots spewing adult content or trash. That’s likely due to there just being fewer accounts.

I’ve yet to form an opinion, but that in and of itself is something. I don’t have a negative impression so far.

Don’t forget threads!

Yeah, that place where everyone signed up over that one weekend, and then went away. It’s not a ghost town, but it might as well be if you’re looking to do tech talk.

I’m ready to engage more there if the community shows signs of life. However, I hate Facebook, and the Threads terms of service seem overly permissive.

We’re still on Twitter, I mean, X

I’m tweeting less, but that’s mostly because I’ve been working on home projects and taking time this Summer on other things. Also, X has made it harder for me to post (no more TweetDeck or automated posts from my blog). Oh, and you can’t embed Tweets anymore, so so dumb.

But, I’m not seeing a mass exodus of Oracle or tech folks leaving Twitter. I AM seeing people TALKING about leaving Twitter.

I’ll be staying on X for as long as there’s someone to talk to. And I’ll continue to be other places. So continue to @ me, we’ll keep talking about how to optimize your database experience!

However, if YOU are leaving X/Twitter, then you can find me in other places.

• YouTube – not doing much video content, sporadic at best
• Reddit – I’m helping moderate both /r/oracle and /r/oraclecloud
• LinkedIn – sharing tech content
• Oracle Communities – helping people with our tools
• StackOverflow – answering questions on [oracle] [oracle-sqldeveloper] [oracle-ords]
• Database Tools Discord Server
• Instagram – 100% personal/private. If I know you IRL, I’ll probably accept your friend request

A word about LinkedIn

DO NOT overlook this place for engaging with fellow nerds and nerdettes. It’s not just about keeping your resume up to date or applying for jobs. In fact, I’m seeing traffic to my blog coming in equal numbers from LinkedIn AND X – so it CAN move traffic to things you care about.

Disclaimers

I’m not speaking on behalf of Oracle. I’m not saying if you like Twitter then you’re a bad person, or vice versa. Feel free to throw in your two cents, but if you say mean things about my friends, I reserve the right to delete your comments.