but Twitter didn't even matter when it was just Twitter. Twitter was a minor, failing social media site up until Musk bought it.
> Twitter was a minor, failing social media site up until Musk bought it.
Maybe "slowly failing", accelerating after the purchase.
But I slightly disagree with this:
> Twitter didn't even matter when it was just Twitter.
I think twitter was disproportionally more significant, though not as hugely so as its denizens believed. If there were a graph of "number of subscribers" (X) vs "influence over Zeitgeist" (Y), Twitter would appear a little above the curve.
The reason is that a lot of journalists corresponded on it so things discussed on it would appear in the press.
I started using it last summer or so -- a few months before the sale. I never (and don't) like the short form. I'm more likely to see something outside my "bubble" on TW than FB, but frankly FB is more useful to me (I just want to know news about my friends and family, and their kids, basically, plus cat and dog pictures). Climate Twitter is pretty good; for some reason the same kind of thing doesn't appear on FB (Machinist FB is good and there appears to be no Machinist Twitter that I can find).
If this sounds like a defense of twitter: it isn't. I'm just saying that "didn't matter" is probably too absolute. It never mattered a lot, though.
Twitter was anything but a minor player in the social media space. Financially, it was treading water due to the difficulty of monetizing its userbase.
What doomed the site was the Elon purchase. The additional debt has basically ensured the sites deterioration, long before Elon started alienating his advertisers and demonstrating his lack of commitment to free speech.
There certainly seemed to be a number of advertisers who reduced, or entirely removed, their commitments to purchase space on the platform. While many have since reversed somewhat on that, many have not or have not completely unless there has been a major change this quarter (the just full figures I've seen reported in were for 2023Q2 and IIRC the total advertising sales were down >55% compared to 2022Q2).
That is two fairly negative indicators with demonstrable evidence. Do you have any positive metrics in mind?
I read somebody today remarking that Twitter was an indignation machine, but I think twitter is very productive if you're following people who produce content or information rather than following political pundits and reporters.