@bastianallgeier I mostly tweeted via SMS back in those days, actually. It was a cool feature in that between time when people had laptops and desktops but not smartphones.

@bastianallgeier as a Mets fan I’d tweet about “D Wright” all the time and it would try to send messages to @wright who had no idea what I was talking about

@bastianallgeier I was an early adopter of twitter and it was an entirely different website in it's infancy. Social medias all change so much and I think people forget that.

@bastianallgeier When I joined Twitter, SMS was the only way to post via mobile. I still cringe at the time a friend showed up on my doorstep, texting if I’m home. I texted back “I’m poopin’. I’ll be out in a sec.” Except that wasn’t a text from the friend, but from Twitter (as a DM) and my reply got posted public.

@bastianallgeier all excellent points!😂

@bastianallgeier How I remember it was that people were using dm instead of just d.

@bastianallgeier Just reading this is making me blush. The drama that must have created!

@bastianallgeier mastodon in a year or so will hardly resemble what is here today.

@bastianallgeier @rossgrady tweets by sms weren’t just supposed to be a thing - they worked until a couple of years ago, long after they stopped publicizing it. The shortcut number was 40404

@bastianallgeier I remember all this!

@bastianallgeier The who to follow was just us weirdos doing #ff #followfriday

@bastianallgeier And the days when a retweet was a tweet that started with RT and a quote tweet started with QT.

@bastianallgeier Late reply but man, this brings back memories. I had forgotten all about the ‘d’ for direct message and the “Oh, that was supposed to be private” tweets that would inevitably come from all of us at one or twelve times a day.

@bastianallgeier oh gosh, I forgot about tweeting via SMS

@bastianallgeier wow. I forgot the failwhale

@bastianallgeier we used to update via jabber clients too, as I recall

@bastianallgeier All this is true - also a user on the bird platform from 2008. Receiving tweets via SMS was so weird. Failwhales came in packs. I thought they had gone extincyt but I hear they have been sighted. Yet to see one, but I have my binoculars handy #tharsheblows

@bastianallgeier many people forget the simple beginnings of mature platforms. I joined in 2008 as well, it was a fun time, and to be honest a simpler time in many ways.

@bastianallgeier IRC was weird when it came out, MySpace was weird as well and then Facebook. But Mastodon can become a very good alternative ! I kinda like it :)

@bastianallgeier and I still remember the RT: thing

@bastianallgeier oh, and the . before the mentions to avoid it being treated as a reply…

@bastianallgeier Tweets via SMS were pretty much the reason I first joined in '08. Living with my folks who only had dial-up still and LiveJournal wasn't doing it anymore.

@bastianallgeier I quit Twitter around the time you started to be able to post from the web.

@bastianallgeier the SMS thing is a reminder that twitter originally tried to interface with an open interoperable protocol, an early fediverse

@bastianallgeier

I so remember tweeting via sms. And failwhale and so much more…

@bastianallgeier also remember the retweets were invented but the community by simply copying & pasting the original tweet to a new tweet and sticking RT in front then @ tagging the original poster… ah the good ol’days

@bastianallgeier hahahahah I forgot about tweeting via SMS! 🤣

I remember those days, and Twitter being down often. :-)

@bastianallgeier I used to write my Netnews cancel-my-post requests by hand, 30 something years ago. Because I was using hacked up stuff on a 286.

But those were just requests. My own primitive personal setup had no way actually to honor them. I didn't receive a lot of groups, though.

@bastianallgeier my first sign-up was via a response to a newspaper via sms. Weird? Now seems to be, not back then.

@bastianallgeier hahaha 🙌 , Oh, the early days!

@bastianallgeier i remember someone from mexico forgot the d and then everybody saw his d; he later clarified he was hacked, lol

@bastianallgeier fail whale 🐳

https://ioc.exchange/@alaric/109306377757139691

@bastianallgeier, I still preface retweets with RT! 😆

@bastianallgeier Every Internet service starts small & incomplete. Given its age I've been extremely impressed with the flexibility here eg filters, content warnings, instance choice, account migration, import/export etc etc

@bastianallgeier Once the meetups start we’ll know we’re in the new golden age.

@bastianallgeier The original retweet was just to copy their tweet with "RT" and their handle as a prefix. Tweet too long? Too bad!

Smart users shortened their tweets by the number of characters in their handle plus three characters for the space and the RT to allow for Retweets.

@bastianallgeier Let’s pour one out for the blessed Twitter 40404.

@bastianallgeier@mastodon.sociaI remember too! We forget … although there was something nice about those days.

@bastianallgeier

everything that's mainstream at one point in time it's been "weird" to most people some time before (if they even knew about its existence then!)

@bastianallgeier it reminds me of Twitter original for sure. I used to love Twitter. It was the pulse of the united states until capitalism sucked it into the abyss.

@bastianallgeier At one point it was almost a daily occurrence to see the FailWhale at some point during the day!

@bastianallgeier I remember those days well. Trying to convince companies to get on Twitter, which was my job back then… it was a very hard sell.

@bastianallgeier Disappointed by the "d". Feels like college again. 🫣

@bastianallgeier except Mastodon is six years old now. Onboarding and discovery shouldn’t be this difficult this deep in.

@tristan @bastianallgeier I think the D syntax still exists, clients just fill in the name to make things easier. I can name at least two obscure desktop clients that do this. Also yes, forgetting the D in an SMS was always fun. No way to delete by SMS either at first. Just have to deal with the shame until you can get home and delete it.

@bastianallgeier I really want to meet some brazilian users here but I think it's impossible

@bastianallgeier I tweeted via SMS like crazy, until they shut the service down!

@bastianallgeier That's when I joined too. It was clunky AF at first. Now that they've finally streamlined it Eloon has pulled the plug on the project.

@bastianallgeier I MISSED THE BEST PART! Didn’t join the bird app til 2010.

@bastianallgeier I remember when hashtags were new and started showing up on TV shows, thinking “wait, they have an IRC channel for this show? … wait, what server is it on?”

@bastianallgeier Welp now the failwhale is CEO

@bastianallgeier I remember all of that. Back before the app was well known and only the community knew the system, it was so very different then.

I'm new here, and so far I really like what I see. I'm curious how this place will evolve.

@bastianallgeier I am liking Mastodon. I deactivated my Twitter account today. Moving forward. #twittermigration #twitterrefugee #newhere

@bastianallgeier Was there in 2008 as well.
Remember these?

RT:
OH:
What color is the dress????

@bastianallgeier I mean I used to play multiplayer text games at 2400 baud on dial-in BBSes but I wouldn’t expect them to compete against RDR2 today

@bastianallgeier Hahaha... good walk on Memory Lane. I joined in late 2007.

@bastianallgeier who knows, maybe the #FailWhale will make a return as Twitter’s coding infrastructure falls apart. +1 for the nostalgia!

@bastianallgeier exactly... or RT for a retweet or the constant Blue Whale when Twitter was down!

@bastianallgeier the expectations are things "just work" these days. Early adopters, chasm crossing, etc.

NGL I use Linux so my opinion may be too fringe to matter

@bastianallgeier you’re really taking me back to a different time

@bastianallgeier yes, and trying to learn the difference between RT, DT, MT before there was that feature.

@bastianallgeier aw, I was just thinking nostalgically about the failwhale the other day

@bastianallgeier "Retweeting" wasn't really a thing that existed in technology, it was a social convention involving cut and paste.

@bastianallgeier
Yeah I signed up to twitter around the same time specifically to text-tweet a trip I was taking for mates. I always assumed the 140 character limitation was due to the number of characters available in one text - someone might tell me it wasn't.
I am somewhat surprised it survived as technology '(smart' phones) made what I assumed to be its user model obsolete. Network effect I presume.

@bastianallgeier @Larymir we are not alone remembering this past!

@bastianallgeier It's my second day here and I think Mastodon is fine. Just needs more people and we're rocking.

@bastianallgeier I used to send tweets via text, I didn't have a smartphone then.

@bastianallgeier I joined Twitter in 2009. Shortly afterwards, RT's were introduced. This was simply achieved by placing the letters 'RT' and the original poster's handle before the text of the original post. The post could subsequently be edited at will by the RT'er, or even completely made up. It took Twitter well over a year to even start building in safeguards against this by then frequently occurring practice.

@bastianallgeier i hardly remember any of it except of manual RT

@bastianallgeier I had totally forgotten all of those “things” but yeah I joined in 2007 and I was once hosted at Chris Messina’s place in San Francisco. A great man. I guess he’s on #Mastodon, right?

@bastianallgeier Also, there was no "reply" function, you started your reply with @username and URL's counted against the 140 character limit.

@bastianallgeier Adding @chrismessina to this thread.

@bastianallgeier @chucker I was there 74 years ago! SMS was *definitely* a thing. I joined Twitter back on a dumb flip phone and had several people I followed through SMS primarily. An early use of Twitter was for arranging meetups in places like PAX and SMS following was quite handy for that.

I probably still have one or two rarely/never Tweet accounts with SMS follow on.

@bastianallgeier And there was a free RSS-Feed for accounts :3

@bastianallgeier Thanks for this reminder 😄

@bastianallgeier please tell me this isn't true 🙃 :blobfox3c:

@bastianallgeier RT

@bastianallgeier Weirdness becomes ingrained when you use any service for long enough. I’d say Mastodon’s onboarding is bumpy and there are lessons to learn around eg DMs. But otherwise, familiarity should come pretty quickly for folks already used to Twitter.

@bastianallgeier don't forget retweets (copy-pasting tweet and putting "RT @handlegoeshere" in front of it) and the lack of a dedicated image uploading method (rip twitpic)!

@bastianallgeier @reichenstein The thing with that analogy of Mastodon 2022 and Twitter 2008 is: give it 5--10 years (to Twitter 2018 standards) -- and will people complain about similar problems by then? Toxic timelines, etc?

I do hope Mastodon's non-profit roots enable better tools to fight this, like smaller instances and moderation, and help users create spaces they enjoy.

But we should brace for the inevitable problems of scaling this up.

@bastianallgeier the Federated view reminds me of a 2007-8 Twitter web app, I think it was called Twitterverse, which was a world map on which Tweets showed in real-time. It was fine at first but when the platform got busy it became mental and impossible to follow.

@bastianallgeier I remember them days :bd03:

@bastianallgeier @mmasnick you’ve brought some memories back with this post! I too joined in 2008, remember the principle to tweet by SMS and ‘enjoyed’ the d concept for direct messaging. It feels a long time ago, back when it was a fun place to be. I hope Mastodon has the same feel going forwards. I personally am learning as I go at the moment.

@bastianallgeier I too am this old

@bastianallgeier oh wow I forgot about using d. Used to quite enjoy sending messages via SMS as I didn’t have a smart phone at the time. Different times. Vastly different times.

@bastianallgeier I remember how lost I was when I first discovered Facebook and made an account.

@bastianallgeier I completely forgot about having to start a tweet with a 'd' for it to become a DM. Wow. Thanks for the flashback.

@bastianallgeier yup me too so you would think I would be ok with Mastodon, but I am finding it non-instinctive. Perseverance is key.

@bastianallgeier THANK YOU … for the reminder.

@bastianallgeier I believe their SMS to tweet still works. I have a friend who SMS his coordinates to a tweet when he's out bush on his satphone as a cost effective way of knowing where to send the helicopters if we don't hear from him

@bastianallgeier Retweeting was simply putting RT and a username before a copied tweet. If you wanted to tweet an image, you'd have to use an external service. URL characters were counted in full, so you used an external link shortener. And all manually. Good times though.

@bastianallgeier
The whale.

@bastianallgeier tbh the tweet-via-sms is what made Twitter the social media of Arab Spring back in 2011, where internet on mobile was all but inexistant except for a couple of cities in wealthy countries.

@bastianallgeier And let us remember that once upon a time, in order to attach a photo, we had to insert the html code in the text, because the forums worked like this

@bastianallgeier the DM misfires were the best part for a while there. And the thing was down more than it was up. It was small enough that the avatars for everyone you followed were in your sidebar. :)

@bastianallgeier i do see potential in #mastodon .

Just exploring it like i used to with #twitter