Remember Google-Free Friday, and The Return of Google-Free Friday? Well, I propose Twitter-Free Friday…
That’s right, on Friday, don’t use Twitter.
Does that sound difficult? Is it anymore difficult than a Google-Free Friday would have been in the past? In fact, Twitter might make it easier for you by failing anyway, in which case it’ll be Fail Whale-Free Friday.
On Friday, I will plan to not use Twitter. I will use identi.ca though, so you can see what I’m up to over there.
It’s an experiment, and who knows where it will go. Join me if you dare.
What is the point of such an endeavor? To break the addiction? Or just to move to identi.ca?
Comment by Jordan Arentsen on Jul 09, 2008 10:13 am
The point is to say we won’t stand for a proprietary system controlled by one company. To look to the future of microblogging and the promise it can hold if we follow a path of openness in it’s development. To move to a federated system with many points instead of a monolithic “fail whale” mascot distracting us from the man behind the curtain who is flipping knobs while the cities burn to the ground.
Comment by Pete Prodoehl on Jul 09, 2008 10:20 am
How much are they (identi.ca) paying you for this?
I hope it’s a lot.
I will participate though.
Comment by Jeramey Jannene on Jul 09, 2008 1:24 pm
Jeramey, my only reward is satisfaction. (And the checks I get from you.)
Comment by Pete Prodoehl on Jul 09, 2008 1:52 pm
I think this is a good idea (thanks for pinging me about it @ identi.ca), but I’m afraid it might be a bit premature. I mean, part of the point of this Twitter-free friday must to get more people to check out Laconica/Identi.ca, right? But for that to be a success I think it would be best to wait until Laconica is a bit more feature complete. Not totally, but a bit. Have a new Twitter-free friday when 0.5 is released and I’m with you! :)
Comment by børge on Jul 09, 2008 2:41 pm
I’m also a little confused on what the real benefit of doing this is.
This would be a great time for cloud computing though, one microblog database and you could access all of your post via whatever service you want (twitter, jaiku, pownce, etc)
Comment by andy on Jul 09, 2008 7:56 pm
This was already tried a while back by some people who got caught up in the wonderful newness of ANOTHER service (friendfeed). It didn’t really catch on then, and I’m guessing this won’t either.. Glad you’re enjoying the wonderful newness that is identi.ca, though ;)
Comment by 4fthawaiian on Jul 15, 2008 12:09 pm
@4fthawaiian, one thing worth mentioning is that FriendFeed is not open source. Besides that though, with every fracture of the Twitter user base, it should illustrate the need for an open and distributed microblogging system where you can *choose* which service you use, and can still interact with others.
Comment by Pete Prodoehl on Jul 15, 2008 12:26 pm
Okay now, I have to tell ya that I remained totally Twitter free, just with you in mind, even though I remain clueless, as some of your other commenter’s apparently are also as to what was the benefit of this.
If nothing else, you can be glad to know that you were in so many different peoples thoughts on that Friday, maybe next year we should just celebrate that day by thinking thoughts of you. Just a thought that needed sharing.
Shiny Up,
Poet Horton
Comment by Poet Horton on Jul 16, 2008 9:17 pm
Nice Site. I am new here but will be visiting more often as you have done a good job.
Thanks
Comment by RandyBrown on Aug 16, 2008 4:21 pm
hey, love the blog - i will try and keep up with it!! please keep more coming :)I wish I could start a blog but I don’t have much time :(Thanks, nick
Comment by nick on Sep 01, 2008 11:14 am