We used hashtags to find people, not farm engagement

I wish Twitter was still a micro-blogging platform.

These days, it's another social media feed where you're constantly having to battle with the algorithm.

Pre- 2014 Twitter was just us tweeting with complete disregard for who might be reading it.

We didn't even call fellow tweeps our 'audience'.

Back then, when I was moving cities quite often for work, Twitter found me my circle of friends, based on our purest form of drivel. It was a roofless, borderless, hangout zone.

My favourite Twitter was when it was a quick venting point, that attracted like-minded emotional unleashers. We felt like superheroes in our own sense, because this community was so small.

I'm telling you - we were content with a hundred followers.

We actually took time to meet each other on-ground (or IRL, as we might say now). We called these meetings tweet-ups.

We used hashtags to find people, not to farm engagement.

Today, things are different.

Today, you have to 'produce' your tweets. And, you have the power to schedule them so it gets the most 'views'. Weeks ago, Twitter released a guide to hacking its algorithm.

Likes are not merely likes anymore. RTs don't necessarily mean the best engagement. And, bookmarking something doesn't auto-sync with my Evernote, and, that's a whole different story.

Today, "a creator is entirely at the mercy of an artificial intelligence-based algorithm to show their content to their followers, and therefore must create content that gets them the most views in the context of the algorithm."