I agree with this, Twitter is still the best place for celebrities to interact with their fans. Elon Musk for example has unveiled more than a few of his ideas and dropped details of his products on Twitter instead of anywhere else.
More like broadcast to their fans.
Which is something of a strength and weakness of Twitter. It can be used for conversations but the 140 character limit makes it tough. As a result, Twitter is generally best used for people who are broadcasting things to a group of interested followers. If that doesn't describe you (either as a follower or a followee) then you're probably not going to find Twitter very useful.
I don't have the time or energy to consume the firehose that my Twitter feed has become - so I just don't use it anymore.
Twitter might have value, but no route to profitability.
Edit: Y'all are super salty about Twitter falling apart. Sad!
People have to sign up for a mailing list; and people who aren't signed up generally don't get your content. This is a stark contrast with Twitter, where content is shared at a significantly higher rate. I don't necessarily have to subscribe to a certain source to get content from them, if someone in my network decides to share that content. When was the last time you received a message that was sent over a mailing list that someone forwarded to your inbox?
I don't follow Elon Musk, but if he puts out an important tweet someone I follow will retweet him putting his content in my feed. An Elon tweet with some big announcement easily reaches an audience of millions. No mailing list has that kind of reach.
Massive mailing list. Web enabled. Trivial cost. Deep links possible to share. EDIT: And more than 160 characters! Hallelujah! A format an actual discussion can take place in.
I compare the two because I'm old, tech is cyclic, and everyone reinvents the wheel. Twitter is, clearly, not special, and can't justify its valuation.
You just aren't going to ever have that with a mailing list. If you could we would be doing it.
Because "current news" are so interesting/relevant/important to one's everyday life and/or politics?
It's mostly a bunch of noise -- with plenty of BS and lies on top.
If you want to know what's happening, better read a "not instant", more analysis/depth outlet.
I read WaPo and the NYT for that, Twitter is for breaking news and info from reporters real-time when they are questioning folks.
That said, is this page representative of what you're talking about or am I missing a better UI? http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2017-February/threa...
Obviously it could be styled differently/"better" for mass consumption, but that aside, it still exposes private emails and full names of the participants.
And I think the character limit is part of what makes it valuable...I don't really want to read an essay, the forced concision is great for a lot of the use cases. And getting back to Elon, he probably doesn't want to engage in deep discussion with all those randoms, he wants to drop a juicy tidbit, build excitement and let the discussion happen elsewhere. When he has something more to say, he writes a blog post and tweets a link.
I'm actually not defending Twitter's valuation or business prospects, just the value or uniqueness of the service relative to something like a mailing list. I'm still not convinced they're so similar.
Just joking around. But, not completely. The value you speak of is really the ability to spend your time on something potentially more worthwhile. People forget social media has an opportunity cost.
You can be the best platform in the world, and if you don't make money, you're going under.