I REMEMBER NOVEMBER 2006 as the month when a dozen students in one of my university classrooms were comparing and contrasting Twitter to Jaiku. Both were simple microblogging services that were redefining how we consumed and shared information. Both are gone now.
Back then, when something was going on anywhere--anything--I would tap into Twitter first and I would discover people were tweeting about it already. Twitter was where national journalists went to package their breaking news. Twitter was the API I valued most for apps I paid to use. As Twitter grew, customers discovered they could tweet about lost luggage and everyone would jump. Fans could connect to celebrities and get Green Room Access as long as they didn't have a creepy timeline. Improbable business connections and artistic collaboration became possible as many of my students discovered. It all happened without there ever being a master plan.
On campus, Twitter was social before Instagram because the watering hole of choice. Even today, Twitter remains the place where some of my most resilient social connections remain encamped. But the social media network I once revered has gone down the Xitter.
Its demise happened because Elon Musk purposefully decommissioned Twitter and so it could be relaunched as a white supremacist water cooler. This feels like the global phone company has lost directory services.
Yet some of my friends stubbornly stay with the sinking ship. They have reasons.
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They Value Community
Twitter originated as a place where connections were societally mandatory. Before conferences and Eventbrite meet-ups, Twitter let people see who were coming. Sometimes I could connect with celebrities, influencers, and thought leaders in a way that wasn't possible on other platforms.
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Hive Minds
You can still get lazy web answers on Twitter but the reach of your complaints is massively diminished because there are fewer collaborators using the service now.
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No Longer the Go-To Platform for Movements
Twitter used to be where you would go to hashtag a concern. It was a platform for social movements. It played a significant role in #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. People along the cordons could share real-time content. Their voices were heard and their stories were shared.
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Easy Pipe for the Little Guy
Until it was Elongated, Twitter's API would connect to dozens of content providers and its main timeline would share links with previews. This meant little people could amplify their ideas when the platform connected to their flow. This led to the creation of unique communities like Black Twitter and NBA Twitter. When compared to the lively cross-flow of the last decade, those content collections are muted today.
I tell my kids Twitter used to be a place where I'd see things before knowing I needed to know them. But despite being a stronghold of diverse content, Twitter never monetized at the level expected of its shareholders. And through the year it fced criticism for issues the spread of misinformation. So now we're left with the Musk Era and can only look back on some of the elements that once made it great.
[Bernie Goldbach teaches digital transformation on the Clonmel Digital Campus for the Technological University of the Shannon. Find his tweets on Bluesky now.]
