About That Twitter Thing...

So, as you’ve all probably heard by now, Twitter is falling apart…maybe. But whether it’ll truly go away or not, people are scrambling to find the next big thing. And it’s a mad scramble, because what that next big thing is changes about every other day. Plus, a lot of people create accounts on every new service, only to then never actually post or reply on there, rendering the whole thing kind of meaningless. It’s all a pretty big mess.

I wanted to take a minute and explain my stance on the situation, and to let you know how you can stay in touch with me and the things I do.

Alright, first off: I’ll keep posting on Twitter. It’s been my main marketing platform for years, I (somehow) built up a following of 1913 cool people, and I’m not about to throw it all away because Twitter might potentially be going away, maybe.

But just in case that Twitter does implode or becomes unreliable, I’ve set up a Mastodon account. And yes, I’m actually active there. I mainly cross-post stuff with Twitter, but I gotta say that I really like Mastodon, and it might very well become my new main account in the future. So if you want to keep up with my microblogging activities, following me there is a good idea. If you don’t know how, I wrote a quick guide on joining Mastodon.

Finally, I also have an Instagram account. But to be perfectly honest with you, I’m not really active there; I mainly just cross-post scheduled tweets and marketing stuff there. I might use it more in the future, who knows, but I never really “got” Instagram.

As for Cohost, Hive and all the others: I did make accounts on some of them (you know, juuuust in case) but I don’t plan on using them any time soon. If you find me there, feel free to follow, but don’t expect anything.

Because here’s the thing.

Social media is primarily a business thing for me. Of course I use it to stay in touch with people, to exchange tips, discover new projects, all that good stuff. But the reason I created a Twitter account in the first place is to market my games. I feel a bit icky saying this, but that’s how it is. I want to make gamedev my job, and for that you need to yell at people to buy your shit.

This makes this whole Twitter-exodus scramble tricky for me. Making accounts on new services to stay in touch with people is fine. But I can’t make accounts on Cohost, Hive, CounterSocial etc. and then do marketing on all of them, especially since none of them are currently supported by any scheduling tools. I’m just one dude. It’s way too much work, and especially right now, where no service has become the next big thing, it’s potentially just a huge waste of time.

So, I developed a different strategy. One I should have started following years ago.

My Own Hub

Instead of putting time and energy into chasing the next big social media trend, I’ll instead invest that time and energy into my website and my newsletter. My website should be the central hub for all my stuff, but for some reason I never really quite treated it like that. And that’s gonna change. In fact, it has already changed.

I made some changes in my setup to make it easier for me to create new posts on here, and I modified the front page so you can more easily see and access my latest posts. I’ll also be adding RSS feeds for your convenience, and I’ll keep tweaking things here and there to make my website a better experience for both you and me. So from now on, this website is gonna be the main source of news about my games.

This will be accompanied by my newsletter. Yes, it might seem quaint to have a newsletter in this day and age, but if that whole Twitter debacle has proven one thing, it’s that you really shouldn’t build your business on top of another business you have no control over. If Twitter gets Thanos’d, my 1900+ followers will disappear with it, and I’ll be left high and dry. Hence, the mailing list. Because simply put:

Believe me, I don’t like receiving emails any more than you do. I won’t spam you with shit, and I’ll try my best to actually make it worth your while. My subscribers recently got to play an early build of Chibi Ninja Shino-kun, and I’m planning to do more special events like this so you can get something extra out of it. But above all else, you’ll have a reliable way to get updates on my stuff, regardless of whether Elon is having a bad day or not. And I’ll have the knowledge that I can easily reach my fans no matter what’s going on in social media land.

So, it would really mean a lot to me if you subscribed.

So…that’s about where things stand. Should one of the new services become the default like Twitter was/is, I will eventually make an account there, of course. But my focus for now will be to consolidate my fanbase in my own domain, since it just makes the most sense for everyone. And by bookmarking this site and joining my newsletter, you can help with that.

Thanks for reading, thanks for understanding, and be excellent to each other!

-And0

TL;DR

1. I’ll keep posting on Twitter until it goes down, if it ever does.
2. I’m also active on Mastodon. Find out how to join here.
3. I don’t plan on using other accounts right now.
4. Bookmark this site, as I’ll use it as my main hub from now on.
5. Subscribe to my mailing list to get updates and exclusive stuff.