thebaldgeek and X (Twitter)

 I've been forced to make some changes in how I use X.

I was 'happy' (not really - but) to pay the $8 per month to get two key features:

1. Longer tweets. I do tend to go on but I try and pack as much actual content and knowledge into the longer tweets as possible. Once you add a link, the longer option was very useful.

2. Tweetdeck (x Pro). Man, this was my lifeblood to using the platform. I had lists setup in it - this cannot be understated just how CRITIAL lists are to using the platform even without Tweetdeck - but most important, x Pro updated with chats, DM's and comments in real time much much much better than the native website browser or Android phone app. (Both of which are a glitchy mess).

Early April, X decided to lock X Pro behind the next level of subscription. A jump from eight bucks a month to $40.
Nope. That's it.
I'm out.

Since my $8 a month now only gives me long tweets and a blue blob, I've canceled that as well.
It will end in a few weeks.

I will still be around on X. It's by far and far far far away THE best aviation community on the web bar none.
Mastodon was DOA from the get go. BlueSky is a big empty room.

I plan to still be on X. I will simply post links to this blog.

Thus, many of the blog posts will be shorter, i.e., they will just take the place of the longer tweets and the like.
Of course, connecting with the AVGEEK / OSINT / TwitterRandos will be a lot harder, we will have to work that out as we go.

I've tried to enable subscriptions to this blog, so you can get an email or ping when I post.

So, what happen?
Best as I can tell: https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musks-x-restructures-ahead-of-spacex-ipo-6aab5673

(Use archive or anti-paywall reader).
Here is a cut from that to highlight what I think the root cause was....

One word. Greed.
They are trying to pump the numbers ahead of the IPO.
Well, they lost my money and I know a lot of others also gave up.
I think I'd go to $10 per month for blue blob, long tweets and tweetdeck. Being engaged with this very vibrant community is very important, but I don't think those three are worth more than 12 bucks at most.

I will also try and clean this section of the home page up.

It's hard for me to maintain, but I will try and come up with a clean way to posts links to this blog from there, so any that use the site and actually look at the home page (very few) will also see the updates to this blog. (One thought is to try and embed an RSS feed from the blog to that section - auto update would be sahweeeet).

I'm all ears for any other ideas you may have for me to get word out....
I'm still on BlueSky. I still have the website chat page (I need to blog about that one, the users are letting it down), If you look, you can find me on Discord (for now, I am really not a fan of that platform), comments on this blog are going to remain open and annon.