Now we realise why we love Twitter

Musk appears to be doing everything he can to undermine the reputation that Twitter has built up and it is hard to work out why he spent $44 billion on it.

From mass layoffs to treating staff badly to a strangely high number of missteps in a very short space of time. Paying for a blue tick was removed because the obvious happened, letting too many employees go was somewhat reversed because, surprise, the people were actually needed to keep Twitter running and all of this is adding up to advertisers running away at an uncomfortably quick pace.

What all of this has done, however, is make people like me not take Twitter for granted anymore. It made me realise that I use Twitter more than all of the other services put together, possibly more than the web, and that it has become a place I go to multiple times a day for news, laughs and so much more.

You can build Twitter to be ‘your’ social network because you get to control who you follow and who is following you. If the wrong people get involved in your life you can quickly deal with them or you should be able to. There are the obvious pitfalls with trolls and so many other people who cannot deal with people socially in any environment, but it has been a positive place online to be. At least that has been my experience.

Musk had some weird notion of free speech without considering the impacts of unfettered utterance on such a huge network. He believed that he could ride in on an electric-powered horse and suddenly make Twitter build profitability and, well, he fucked up didn’t he.

He has no clue how to manage a social network and he should have been advised of this way before he got to purchase Twitter. He can’t even manage his own Twitter account without screwing up regularly so why should any of the past few weeks have been a surprise.

What is surprising is that one man has the power to buy such a large social network and screw it up so spectacularly and so publicly while we all watch.

I for one will stay with Twitter until, and if, it finally dies and mainly because the competition is not exactly competitive. Mastodon is touted as the main competitor, but I don’t believe it will continue to fly. 99% of people do not want to deal with servers or anything technical and a big social network needs 50% of those 99% to have the power it needs. And the others I have tried so far just don’t come close.

It really does make me appreciate Twitter for what it is today and for what it it has been over the past 15 years, and 17,200 tweets, for me.