It’s taken me a long
time to come to this decision but it’s time to say goodbye. I am closing my
Twitter account.
It’s not because of
the growing volume of antisemitic tweets, or the racism, misogyny, lies, and
fake news that fill its threads. It’s not because of Elon Musk, or his decision
to rename the platform as X. It’s not because of Musk’s connection with
president-elect Trump.
Well, those are some
of the reasons. But also, it’s because I no longer have use for Twitter, or the
time suck it’s become in my online life.
I joined Twitter in
January 2013 as a way to connect with other authors. I had just published Valley
of Thracians, and I was eager to promote the book. Initially I had great
success on the platform, quickly building up a following. I made efforts to
connect with each and every follower on a personal level. My tweets were being
read. Followers were clicking through to my blog and amazingly, I was selling
my book.
I wrote about those
early Twitter days in How I Got 10,000 Twitter Followers in Less than 10 Months.
I believed I had
become an expert on the social media platform. In June 2016, I published an
article entitled Ten Most Important Things You Need to Know About Working with Twitter on the Huffington Post. In the article I explained my Twitter
Philosophy. “Engage, do not sell” was my advice to fellow authors. My advice
was so extensive that I published a follow-up article entitled Five More Things You Need to Know About Twitter.
At that time, I had
35,000 followers. I was using Hootsuite to schedule and publish multiple tweets
throughout the day. I tweeted about my books, included links to my blog
articles, and shared my book reviews. I tweeted about Bulgaria, about Israel,
and about the craft of writing. My tweets were being read.
In August 2016, I
wrote on Medium:
Using Twitter has
been, for me, a way to promote my writing. When I post a blog article, I tweet
about it to attract eyeballs, to get as many readers as possible. To make a
name for myself.
Maybe that was a
successful mission then, but I no longer see any benefits from using Twitter.
The platform has
suffered in the Musk era, with scores of my followers no longer active, or who
have already closed their accounts. A tweet of mine which would previously get
hundreds of impressions can no longer get more than 50. No one is actually
reading what I tweet. There are no clicks, visits to my blog, or sales of my
books.
It’s become a waste of
my time and a burden to maintain the account. I had reached a peak at 44,000
followers; that number is now down to 36,800. Nearly all of those followers have inactive accounts. None of them will miss
me, just as I won’t miss any of the 24,900 people I currently follow.
I don't plan to
replace Twitter with Bluesky or any social media alternative. No more tweets
for me. Twitter served its purpose and then lost its luster. It’s been a long
road which has now come to its end.
Goodbye Twitter.
Related articles:
How I Got 10,000 Twitter Followers in Less than 10 Months
Ten Most Important Things You Need to Know About Working With Twitter
Five More Things YouNeed to Know About Twitter
My 100,000th Tweet. What’s It Worth?