At any rate, I've been quite happy with Mastodon as a Twitter alternative. It has the same vibe that Twitter had in the old days, and I was pleased to see that most of the people I joined Twitter to follow have already made the move.
Separately, Twitter's reputation, from an Advertiser's perspective, is tainted as long as the target audience believe it's a bad influence, in my very-slightly informed estimation.
Twitter would need to rebrand, or be decomposed & then recomposed into a federation of services, in order for the stink to be lost on that audience segment, again in my estimation.
Maybe Facebook is still dominant because it actually is Social network. Twitter was and still is dominant with news organizations. So maybe it just need to keep them engaged.
The vast majority will simply continue to use the platform as it is, whether to engage or be engaged.
If Twitter is to pass the way of MySpace, a competitor will need to come along with a more tempting siren song. As with Facebook, that transition may take a couple generations.
I don’t think Twitter will look significantly different in terms of usage in 5 years. It will be an uglier, even more monitized experience, but it will also be more profitable.
All advertisers will be back, as with most users who left as a reaction to Musk.
Twitter will be the #1 short form mass blathering platform for a very long time to come.
I do think there’s a big opening for a competitor to enter, but Twitter has incredible inertia.
The best play would be to pay the top 10 Twitterers to move over to some new platform exclusively. Drag a mass of people with them to prime the siphon. That’s not cheap, but possible. Maybe some other billionaire will find it just to troll musk.
I think we’re (us humans) stuck with Twitter and Elon for a long time still.
I think most people partake in Twitter for the drama anyway. More drama, more eyeballs, higher rent for advertisers. The new CEO certainly understands that and can certainly generate drama.
Beyond that, Twitter does need to keep news organizations engaged, but Musk is driving them away by banning a lot of the journalists who work at those organizations.