The future of Twitter (both the company itself as well as its technical infrastructure) is currently uncertain. With a chilling of advertiser interest, technical glitches, and a mercurial owner, uncertainty abounds. This isn’t really about Twitter, however. It’s about you as a creator, or you (the royal “you”) as someone who is looking after a public-facing aspect of a brand), and what to do to right now to reduce risk and start thinking about the possibility of a world where Twitter is no longer the global watercooler. And even if — and it seems to be quite an “if” at this point — Twitter does remain the watercooler, creators and brands need to have more ways to identify and connect with their true fans and followers in a manner that doesn’t rely on the whims of any third-party platform. There is always a fundamental risk is building on someone else’s land. The landowner — in this case, Twitter — always has the power to do things you can’t control. (In this case, turning a chaos monkey loose inside the control room.) But what can you do? Unless you try to build your own system from scratch, this will always be the case, right? Happily, that is *not* the case. You don’t need to build your own thing from scratch. Instead, you can use existing tools to create your own direct connections with fans and followers that can’t be taken away from you. If you do this, you won’t need to start over on a new platform if the main platform you’re using goes away, or if a new one comes up to take its place. So, with that background, Flocker gives you a way to have your own connection with fans and followers without ever needing to rely on the whims of a third party. Flocker sets up a simple membership directory that you can always control, you can always see, and one that can’t be taken away from you. Here’s an incredibly important thing to remember: the membership connections you make using the Flocker app belong to you. While the Flocker app is helping you spin them up, those connections are a direct connection between you and your fans and followers. They can’t be arbitrarily changed, and they are yours. You will be always able to see and access those connections through the smart contract that powers them, without requiring any software or services from Unlock Labs or any other entity. (You can even manage those memberships directly through a block explorer, if you are so inclined.) Creating a membership program and sharing it with your Twitter followers takes only a few moments with Flocker. As members sign up to your list, you now have a way to always be in contact, regardless of what services you use. You have a direct connection with them, and they have a direct connection with you. You now have your own portable membership list that can never be taken away from you. And, as a bonus, you and your fans and followers — your members — can go anywhere together. Portable memberships are just that — your fans and followers can follow and connect with you on any site across the web that supports token-gating using memberships. There are a number of sites and services available today you can use to set up new (or additional) outposts where you connect with your fans and followers. Once your fans connect with you, your fans and followers — your members — can reach you on any of these services. No middleman. No gatekeeper. No chaos monkey to take them away from you. Here are a few services you could use to connect with your members today using memberships. More are coming online all the time. - Discord - Telegram - Paragraph - Highlight - Geneva - Tropee - WordPress …with more being added all the time. In other words, you can use any of those platforms to connect with your members today — and move between them at will. What’s more, with a number of major sites (e.g. Instagram, Reddit, etc.) beginning to experiment with and embrace web3 infrastructure, it is possible (and perhaps even likely) that memberships you create will be able to be used for access on those sites in the future as well. We can't wait for you to give Flocker a whirl, and please let us know what you think!