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Where to Find Prominent Voices in Software Other Than Twitter

Where to Find Prominent Voices in Software Other Than Twitter

Updated 6 Nov 22

Thousands of thoughtful and experienced software professionals use Twitter to share information and interact with one another. We’ve come to depend on Twitter as a source of information and interaction with colleagues.

With the recent changes at Twitter, many users are looking for alternative social media platforms. But many of us hesitate to “leave” Twitter because that’s where we find industry leaders in the software field, and we don’t want to miss out on what they have to teach us.

The most well-known of these typically use Twitter mainly as a publishing platform and for “reach” rather than for socializing. Therefore, our experience with them consists of reading whatever they post and following links to other Internet sites to read their articles and blog posts; listen to their podcasts; and watch their videos, conference talks, and interviews.

In other words, it isn’t a social relationship, but rather a producer-consumer relationship. For example, some industry leaders write article-length pieces in the form of tweet threads. This is a poor user experience for the consumer. True, there are some ways to improve the experience – through third-party services like ThreadReaderApp, for instance – but still, a social media platform isn’t optimized for that use case.

We can get the same value by visiting people’s sites directly, with no dependency on Twitter. If some of us happen to know some of these individuals, we can connect on other social media platforms. We need not depend on Twitter as the primary contact point. It has been convenient, so we have developed the habit of using Twitter.

If we change our habits in this way, what might we lose? It occurs to me that Twitter functions as a kind of notification system. When someone has a conference talk, training class, or event coming up, or they have just published a new article, book, podcast, or video, they announce it on Twitter. We don’t have to remember to go and visit their sites to find out what’s on their calendars, or what new information they have published. I suspect this notification function will be the hardest thing to replace.

People also tweet when they are looking for work, or looking for employees. There are other sites whose main mission is work-related connections, and they may provide better support for those needs.

This post offers a woefully incomplete list of leaders in the software field whom you may have been following on Twitter, and whom you don’t want to lose track of as things change. Please let me know if I’ve overlooked someone who should be listed.

Adkins, Lyssa (@lyssaadkins)

Bache, Emily (@emilybache)

Beck, Kent (@KentBeck)

Belshee, Arlo (@arlobelshee)

Benson, Jim (@ourfounder)

Booch, Grady (@Grady_Booch)

Brown, Simon (@simonbrown)

Burrows, Mike (@asplake)

Cockburn, Alistair (@TotherAlistair)

Dinwiddie, George (@gdinwiddie)

Falco, Llewellyn (@LlewellynFalco)

Farley, Dave (@davefarley77)

Feathers, Michael (@mfeathers)

Fowler, Martin (@martinfowler)

Gee, Trisha (@trisha_gee)

Glazer, Hillel (@hi11e1)

Gottesdiener, Ellen (@ellengott)

Gregory, Janet (@janetgregoryca)

Grenning, James

Hammant, Paul (@paul_hammant)

Hendrickson, Chet (@chethendrickson)

Henney, Kevlin (@KevlinHenney)

Hightower, Kelsey (@kelseyhightower)

Hill, Michael “GeePaw” (@GeePawHill)

Jeffries, Ron (@RonJeffries)

Jones, Angie (@techgirl1908)

Kerievsky, Joshua (@JoshuaKerievsky)

Kern, Jon (@JonKernPA)

Kua, Pat (@patkua)

Langr, Jeff (@jlangr)

Marick, Brian (@marick)

Morgan, Jeff “Cheezy” (@chzy)

Ottinger, Tim “Agile Otter” (@tottinge)

Patton, Jeff (@jeffpatton)

Perri, Melissa (@lissijean)

Rainsberger, J.B. (@jbrains)

Rothman, Johanna (@johannarothman)

Schwaber, Ken (@kschwaber)

Shah, Binni (@binitamshah)

Shore, James (@jamesshore)

Sutherland, Jeff (@jeffsutherland)

Wake, Bill (@wwake)

…and…