Member-only story
The Day Twitter Died
We’ll be singing, “Bye-bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my Tesla to the office, but there was just one guy.”
Twitter died last Thursday night.
Ok. It didn’t completely die, but by all accounts, Thursday night was a big turning point for the platform. Many of the few remaining employees were laid off, Elon Musk temporarily closed the offices, and the timeline was awash with eulogies for the platform.
While much of the “sky is falling” rhetoric was unproven, Ryan Broderick said it best in his recap of the evening:
Even if Twitter hobbles along like this for weeks or months, it’s safe to say that it’s not coming back the same, even if Musk miraculously stirs the ship back on course. This era of Twitter is over and it’s ok to be sad about that, but it’s also ok to feel silly that you feel sad about that.
The Twitter that exists today may not be the same Twitter that exists in three months, but it is definitely not the same Twitter that existed three weeks ago.
As people lamented and eulogized the Twitter that was, I noticed a pattern emerge on my timeline. The reaction to Thursday’s death spiral broke into two camps:
- Those who lamented and wondered where they would find a similar community again.
- Those who cautioned patience that the coming changes would benefit the platform.
Both of these viewpoints are valid, and both can be true at the same time. However, what I found interesting was who was mainly in the second camp. Most of the people in my feed preaching caution are content creators who primarily use Twitter to expand their audience. Again, there isn’t anything wrong with using Twitter in this way — in fact, I’ve done the same over the years. But the stark contrast in my feed got me thinking about the purpose of social media.
Nearly a decade ago, I wrote “From Seinfeld to Snapchat: Yada, Yada, Yada in a Post-Jerry World.” The article was an early Medium success. It garnered attention from legendary reporter and editor Steven Levy, who polished the piece before accepting it into the Backchannel publication, which later moved to Wired Magazine. This early success in my writing career was a huge…
