A Eulogy for Twitter

Last April, The Atlantic posted a "Eulogy for Twitter," claiming that the ubiquitous social media platform is entering its twilight. The article goes on to claim that even though Twitter's earnings are increasing and it's adding users, users are less active than they once were which indicates a big shift in Twitter's place on the Internet. While it hit its peak in 2010 with the Arab Spring and swelled up as a transformative force it has now become merely a "comment section that's filled with spam, hate speech and unverified content." In so many words, Twitter has gone too mainstream to be the vibrant, important platform it once was. Sure, it's still an meaningful platform for otherwise underrepresented groups touching upon important topics, but it is no longer the groundbreaking platform it once was, the one that led us into the mobile Internet age and changed the way we consumed and congregated around real-time news. Even more recently, the exit of several executives and the surge of internal conflicts have questioned further where Twitter is headed in the future.

I personally do not have a Twitter account, and never found a compelling enough reason to join. In fact, I never go on Twitter nor have I ever received breaking news from it. But I definitely see the utility of it for many users who truly have something important to say, and for journalists who are able to deliver real-time news in a way that is able to mobilize social action more rapidly than ever. These are incredibly important uses. However, it's hard to separate those from the tweet battles between the Kardashians while still taking the platform seriously. In the very least, Twitter has completely revolutionized forever the use of the ever important hashtag.