What I learned

I don't miss it.

The level of clarity and peace without it has been awesome.

71 days later, I despise even more vehemently the brevity and shallow treatment of important topics that Twitter and multi-tasking in general promotes.

Why I left

Click here to read the original announcement.

A brain dump of some other reasons:

1. It's a high-school popularity contest run amok.
2. Top ten lists.
3. Top twenty lists.
4. Top fifty lists.
5. Feigned transparency.
6. Real transparency that screams of desperation.
7. Drivel.
8. Self-help quotes.

(Reserve your ecumenical, feel-good nonsense for someone else's feed.)

9. Promotion of self.

   (Not the common marketing tactic of self-promotion, but, rather, promotion of self - I am good, I am kind, like me, I want to be famous, I want you to listen to me, I am unique, valuable, inspired. Whatever.)

10. Stupid political ideas.

(And by stupid I mean anything other than sound Libertarian ideals.)

11. Ass-kissing RTs.
12. Horrible theology tweets.

(@pastormark @perrynoble @stevenfurtick @joshmacdonald and a hundred more all sling a toxic mix of work, common sense, and human merit wrapped in just enough pretend gospel to avoid getting burned at the stake, but also just enough appeal to peddle their goods at reasonable profit margins. Can someone say indulgences? I can and will and it makes me sick more people don't or won't.)

13. Lifecasting.

(Vomit. I don't really care that you're poolside or at the bar for lunch or backstage with some D-lister. I don't know you and I really don't want you knowing where I am, you weirdo stalker. For all I know you could be a porn bot or a Chinese spy. Go away. Social media doesn't undo age old truths, one of which, I believe, to quote Defoe, is "all men would be tyrants if they could." Sorry, no level or amount of any of the above is going to magically make me trust you and share my life with you. And it should be (I hope) vice versa.)

14. Everything is "next!" and "new!" and "groundbreaking!"

    (Yawn.)

Generally, I feel like twitter is cattle driving a hoarde of lemmings towards a gate that sits on the threshold of a dizzyingly high cliff. At the gate, one after the other, we're checking our intelligence, privacy, dignity and humanity before plunging full steam over the edge, shattering into millions of tiny pieces, that no one, like Humpty Dumpty, will be able to put back together again, let alone, make any sense of. The group think, hastily construed social media norms and occasional "twitter/social media made me famous!" "success" stories, are doing nothing to reverse the crushing momentum.

Why I decided to come back

Traditional advertising. Plain and simple.

I spent the last two months reading a bunch of books and essays from the late 1800s and early 1900s on the subject of advertising. Twitter might be a new medium but I have decided to adhere to traditional principles in using it as a communication tool.

Generally speaking by professionally informing the marketplace of the existence and availability of products and services or as one author from 1892 stated "making himself and his commodity known to the public."

Simply put, it's a tool. It's not my social hub. It's not where I find connection with people. If that violates social media mores then so be it. I intend to make the advertising communication interesting, compelling, honest and easy to understand. But it won't be pathetically and awkwardly personal or pleading.

What you will get

1. Announcements and links related to products and services I offer.
2. Links to new Candor Club posts (yes, you will still have to pay $2/month to access them.)
3. The occasional promotion of other entrepreneurs I think you should check out.
4. Links to other types of content on my site - Inspired, Ex Fide, iPhone, etc.
5. Occasional @ replies to various people who choose to engage my marketing communication.
6. In short, traditional advertising communication.
7. Oh yeah, and a new handle from @brandonmuth to @bmuth as it saves 6 characters of space.

If that is boring and not "transparent" enough for you, oh well. If you want more, there are hundreds-of-thousands, if not millions, of other "husbands, dads, small business owners, social network enthusiasts, and designers" already tweeting dump truck loads full of "transparent authenticity." (If you're honest, they already jam 98% of your feed anyway. Far be it from me to try to duplicate their unique uniqueness.)

What you won't get

1. Overwhelming quantity. You get bombarded enough as it is. A handful (or two) a week, tops.
2. Tweets about my kids.
3. Tweets about what I'm doing or where I am (save an occasional business related meeting or something truly out of the ordinary.) Hint: vacations, eating, grilling, drinking beers, driving, or flying don't qualify as "out of the ordinary."
4. Political tweets.
5. Religious tweets.
6. No obligatory follows. (Please make this a two way street.)
7. No forever follows. (Again, make it a two way street.)

("Unless it's a Candor Club post" applies to 2, 4, and 5.)

Am I nuts? Probably. Am I sane? Increasingly unlikely. Do I have deep-seated issues that I'm trying to work through on the fly, whilst trying to make sense of all this disruptive technology, in the midst of a terrible economy? Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

But, ultimately, I'm not desperate for you to like me. Social media and the "let's be friends with everyone" sentiment tends to forget that it's a free market. You can buy from and follow whomever you wish. And you can also NOT buy from and NOT follow whomever you wish. I'm fair game. Do as you please. Blow me up. Compliment me. Ignore me. I don't care. (There's a good chance I'm doing one of the three with you.)

I'm my own flavor with my own takes and opinions and products and startup ideas. I was recently told, in a silly little experiment, that my personality type constitutes only 3% of the population. Some will like me. Many more will not. Oh well.

To steal Guinness's short lived tagline (which I loved) "It (or I) may not be for you."

And that's perfectly OK with me.