In the beginning there was Twitter, and we called posts there “tweets.” Then it burned to the ground and people went all over the place.
Now there’s X, and Bluesky, and Mastodon, Threads, and I don’t even know what else. And every one of them has a different name for their short form posts. And all of those names suck. I am not saying “toot,” Mastodon. You can’t make me. Some of us have respect for the aesthetics of the words we use.
I propose this: let’s just call a tweet a tweet. Don’t worry about what platform it’s on, just call your micro/nano/pico/femto-blog posts tweets. Everybody knows the word already, right? Everybody knows what you mean. It’s in dictionaries for goodness sake. And if you want to be specific about what platform your tweet is on, just say where it is. Don’t make me memorize a table of apps and their terminology. Social media platforms are not supposed to need a glossary!
Twitter as a brand is gone now, but the concept is alive and well. “Tweet” can keep living too. The sound is pleasant and fitting. It is uncontrived—all the alternatives I’ve heard are clearly riffing off it anyway. If you’ve already decided you can’t escape it, just own it. Stop pretending.
No “toots”
No “skeets”
I don’t know a post is called on Threads but it’s probably something like “theet.” No.
No “xeets”
Just “tweet”