Dear Twitter HR,

I have recently become aware that you have an opening for a new CEO.  I am writing to apply for that position.

My plan for twitter would be simple.  Within 90 days of my accepting the role, we would federate Twitter into the fediverse.  AOL became irrelevant because it waited too long to pivot to the open web. Twitter has to open itself to the fediverse or suffer the same fate.

Twitter could then pivot to providing services for organizations to work with them to leverage microblogs and enhance their brand.  Much like IBM and Microsoft, pivoting from products to services would be a better source of long-term sustaining income.

Walled gardens fall when open solutions gain critical mass.  Mastodon is approaching that point.  Twitter can expend resources strengthening the well which will eventually fall or accept that and use our resources to prepare for the next phase.  Believe me, the more we tighten our grip on our users, the more that will slip through our fingers.

My resume is available at https://seanreiser.work.  My contact info is there.  Please review my qualifications and email me for a follow-up.

Thank you for your time,

Sean Reiser

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I decided to finally join Mastodon publicly.  I’ve been on a number of separate instances which focused on special interests and will remain on them, but for my “public facing presence”, I decided to roll my own server (https://social.seanreiser.com/@seanreiser).  Here are my reasons:

• Trust - Joining an instance run by someone else is trading an evil overlord for a potential evil overlord.  As we’ve seen with the Twitter Takeover how quickly censorship can become imposed on a social media platform.  You might think “I can always move to another instance”.  Mastodon is open source, it would take a competent programmer 20 mins to disable the code to port an account to another server.
• Longevity - Anyone who has been on the web for a while knows how quickly a platform can vanish and take your data with it.  I like having the data in a database I control/
• Branding - I don’t want the domain of the server to reveal anything about me, like the smaller special interest instances.  By using a subdomain of seanreiser.com, I enhance my brand.
• Connectivity - For good or for bad server admins can block other servers.  If I’m @sean@jetsfan.example, I don’t want an administrator blocking access to my friend @tim@patriotnation.example.  I want to control who I am blocked from.
• I’m just “that guy” - I’ve run my own mail servers and web servers and built my own RSS reader apps.  Why wouldn’t I run my own server?

I'm not saying you should use your own server, but those are my reasons.  You can follow me at @seanreiser@social.seanreiser.com

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Couldn't Resist