11 Long Years
tl;dr: I should be Twitter’s new CEO. Seriously.
Well, it’s been 11 years on Twitter as of riiiiiiiiight … … …… now.
Let’s Thread it up! And by “thread it up” I mean dump this Google Doc-written piece into Medium because I can’t be bothered to break up ~6000 characters of text into an actual Twitter thread.
I started my Twitter account on Nov 22, 2006, after about 3 months of off-and-on “you should sign up, it’s cool” from several people. It seemed pointless. But then my FOMO(?) got the better of me and I created an account.
Now what do I do?
— Matthew Oliphant (@matto) November 22, 2006
Followed quickly by:
Wait, I get an IM every time a friend posts? ugh. not that I don't care about you guys, but… no context IMs? No thanks.
— Matthew Oliphant (@matto) November 22, 2006
I’m user #16263. Not allowed to have a blue checkmark [insert eyeroll] but suffice to say I’ve been using Twitter, pretty much daily, for a long time now.
While I thought it was pointless to start, I realized quickly how it kept me up on what my friends were doing. It allowed me to ask questions and get answers or guidance within moments. There wasn’t a lot of noise back then. And, no, it really wasn’t “I’m eating a donut” back then. That didn’t start until March of 2008. For all you know.
I’ve made friends via Twitter. Made money (mostly through getting people hired where I worked, then getting the bonus that comes with it). Made business connections. Had (small) impact on products and services through my tweeted feedback. I do recognize I’ve got a lot out of it. From 2006 right through 2014. Maybe 2012.
The past few years have not been as enjoyable.
I partially blame The Algorithm.™ Also, there’s a lot more noise in general. It started before the 2016 election season, but that certainly didn’t help. I ask questions now and, thanks to Twitter Analytics, can see that very few people even see my tweet (even though I have gained followers). The average number of views-per-tweet has been on a decline for a few years now. Which means I don’t feel as connected as I used to with my friends who live around the world. And since we don’t all go to SXSW anymore, there’s a lot of people I rarely “see.”
What can replace what’s been lost? Well, I used to think Slack was a good candidate, but I don’t think it is. I think the best replacement would be to go back to a self-hosted forum. Yep. Old school forum. Remember the 9rules forum? Well, some of you do. It did everything that a lot of community Slacks do now, but you didn’t have to pay yet another company for the privilege of using their app (assuming you want access to all your data). And since it was self-hosted, for the most part, you weren’t the product in the way you are the product for Twitter.
I get notifications on my phone about Twitter’s stock price. I looked it up a few times and now Google thinks I want to know whenever the stock price shifts more than 1%. Usually it goes up 2%, then falls 2%. Basically, for the past 2 years, Twitter’s stock price has been the value of the company, fluctuating between 16 and 20 dollars per share. That long, at that price, means without significant change to what Twitter offers, it won’t get more valuable.
Twitter needs to change what it offers in order to attract more users. Going from a 140 to 280 character limit isn’t really a change; It’s a completely arbitrary number. 140 had a purpose when the product started, even though that purpose quickly became obsolete. A real change would have been to go from 140 to (essentially) unlimited. But that would eat away at part of the soul of Twitter. Brevity is a core and desired feature.
Some of the ways Twitter has failed on the innovation front: Shutting down the 3rd party developers the way they did. I don’t recall the year, but it’s been a while. I get the idea of needing to be more formal with your 3rd party relations and how they make use of your platform, but so many cool things came from it, and were picked up by Twitter. I would have liked to see Twitter buying the IP and hiring the 3rd parties for the features that really took off. Build a company around people who are passionate about the thing you make.
That happened a bit, for sure. But killing it the way they did was a bad idea. Walled gardens are a terrible idea. I mean, I get there need to be some level of wall-ed-ness, but it should be something most people who aren’t hackers can step over. That’s a terrible metaphor.
Twitter has been entirely too, too slow figuring out how to incorporate video into its platform. This is something I actually have a tiny bit of behind-the-scenes insight into. As a test-run, they could be giving music artists a video platform to promote releases of their music videos. For example. No idea where I got that idea. … …
It’s wonderful the level of stability the platform has. I rarely run into issues with the exception of things that crop up on the Alpha build I have on my Android device. But it’s Alpha, so I expect issues. There is a lot that comes out of Twitter that’s good.
That said, I feel like I’m pretty much done with Twitter. Except for the fact I don’t have something to take its place for staying (ambiently) connected with friends.
So I only see 2 ways forward:
Basically go into lurk-mode on Twitter. Check it once a week to see how people are. Say hi now and again, but pretty much not engage.
Become CEO and clean. that. shit. up.
So, Twitter Board of Directors (or whomever is really in charge), call me if you want a CEO that’s focused on quality of service and doesn’t give a shit about the number of accounts, active or not. Build a good thing people want to be part of and the numbers and “engagement” will go up. Be prepared for a lot of changes. Be prepared for a bit of chaos. And yes, even layoffs. But also be prepared to care again about the thing you are board-directing.
If you’re not interested, well, that’s okay, too. I’ll just become one more user who’s well to the left of the 7 on your NPS, looking for something else to jump ship to. Maybe Pownce will come back.
Sorry. Still too soon on that one?
