I'll say it again: In 18 months Twitter will be as dead as MySpace. It is useless, has always been useless, and is the perfect combination of minimal features/zero learning curve to cultivate a festering seething pool of the worst of humanity's juvenile tendencies. It rewards rudeness and actively prevents discourse and nuance. And it's most visible user ever, is basically a dick. And 70-years old. The stock is at less than 30% of its high, and all of the technological ground surrounding its basic functionality has been claimed by well-funded, well-known tools, with giant userbases. The hallway is getting narrow, fast. Heck, 18 months may be generous...
I have a hard time believing that. I don't use it. Neither do most of my friends. My younger brothers though? Their friends? The cohort of people age 16-23 or so is rife with chronic twitter users. The site has become the preferred communication channel for all sorts of media figures. Look at the Black twitter phenomenon, latino twitter, etc. Those aren't going away any time soon, people enjoy them too much.
I've seen so many darlings of technorati die sudden and surprising deaths, I really think it is safe to point at most social media tools and predict a death date of less-than-2-years. And you are right - things like Black Twitter are real, and vibrant communities, that have adopted the tool, and use it heavily. But these niche interest communities probably don't even match the size of Twitter's staff. Just because they are visible above the waves for the moment, doesn't mean they will stay there and continue to use the platform. Switching is basically free, and all you need is a small core of trend-setters to move to GrbLiXpaff (or whatever), and suddenly nobody will touch Twitter with a 10-foot pole. It happens really fast, too. Twitter is trying to innovate, so it doesn't appear stale, but each new feature treads on other apps that already own that territory. (Vine, or Snapchat, or Instagram, or FB, or whoever.) I shall dance upon its digital grave when it dies, too.
I just came to the realization that my typical objection to Twitter - nobody gives a fuck about it except journalists - actually boosts its viability considering we're now dealing with a hostile administration. I'll say this: I configured Metal to talk to Twitter this week and I've never cared to before now. And it's mostly so I can look at funny memes. And erowid recruiter. Always erowid recruiter.
I love that he's 50 million... 50 MILLION followers behind President Obama. I bet that just chaps his ass. That's the SNL skit that needs to be done.... the Donald fretting over who has more followers than him. it might be worth joining twitter JUST TO FOLLOW President Obama and keep his lead growing....
I just followed the failing New York Times. Who has 10 million more followers.