No, Twitter isn’t dead yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
Twitter has been around since 2006 and has never made a profit. Not once. It’s fascinating that it’s lasted this long based on that fact alone. But there are many other companies- Carvana and Peloton come to mind – who haven’t ever made a dime either. Also fascinating, but I digress.
As we all know, Elon Musk purchased Twitter last fall for 44 billion dollars. Everyone- including Elon himself- knows he paid way too much for it. Yet since taking the reins he has done nothing to ensure the future success of the platform. Rather, he seems hellbent on running it into the ground at a record pace.
The most well known misstep was removing the blue verified account checkmarks from well, verified accounts, and giving them to anyone dumb enough to spend $8 a month to get one. Anymore, a blue check mark all but guarantees it’s a fake account – most large companies and celebrities have flat out refused to buy one, and a significant number have left Twitter altogether.
There have been plenty of other head-scratching decisions too. He’s made it almost impossible to share content across multiple platforms at the same time. I used to post all my blogs to Twitter as well as here and to my Facebook page. I can’t do that anymore because the service I was using- along with most others- was suddenly cut off from posting to Twitter unless they paid hefty fees. I am not aware of any service that paid it, and most are now working on integrating with Instagram and / or TikTok instead. He laid off half his staff, only to realize less than a week later he needed many of them back. Spoiler alert- they didn’t come back. The way tweets are curated for viewing has changed a few times, and not for the better. He reinstated accounts suspended for hate speech. Fun fact- in the first 30 days after Musk took over the use of the N word on Twitter was up 300 percent. Not great.
And most recently, in what may be the dumbest move yet, he is limiting the number of tweets people can “see” – meaning scroll by whether or not they read them – in a day. Of course, the morons who are paying $8 a month for this nonsense have almost unlimited reading, but the rest of the users will likely blow through their allotted amount in less than 20 minutes.
Websites that aren’t actual stores make money through ad revenue. One of the most important stats sites point to when negotiating ad costs is the amount of time users spend on their site. The longer each user stays, the more opportunities to view the ad. Actively kicking users off your site is asking advertisers to take their money elsewhere. Quite a few have already, and this move is sure to drive away more.
Barring some miraculous turn around it appears Twitter is on its way out. The once cultural touchstone is becoming a laughingstock and butt of many a joke. It probably would have happened someday even without Elon Musk, but he’s certainly sped up the process.
So RIP Twitter. You won’t be missed.