Op-ed for Crain's on the Muskification of Twitter

I had an op-ed published in Crain’s today contextualizing the Muskification of Twitter within Twitter’s already declining user experience. Since it’s behind a paywall, here are some key points:

Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform may finally make it undefendable, and accelerate its slow decline into irrelevancy …

[After its IPO], leadership choked off its third-party ecosystem, either acquiring or shutting down startups that had come to depend on it. After its IPO in 2013, Twitter shifted its focus to pleasing advertisers. Leadership centralized control so that users spent more time on company-owned products, in the name of measuring “engagement.” Eventually, algorithms dictated the Twitter experience more so than relationships, and those algorithms began to surface the most extreme content.

As Twitter went mainstream, and the platform was unprepared for the central role it eventually took on in society. Journalists formalized their use of Twitter as a resource; politicians came to see it as an essential part of their communications teams. Meanwhile, growth became the obsession in order to placate shareholders, and the core product began to stagnate. Twitter reached the height of its relevancy just as it lost its way on innovation …

Musk is no savior. He’s a figurehead for what Twitter had already become: filled with unsophisticated ideas, assured of its own importance, and ultimately, destined to self-implode.

Does this make me sound bearish on Twitter’s prospects? Yes, yes it does.

Do I think Twitter will become the next Tumblr, with widespread user abandonment after an acquisition? Maybe. Twitter plays a different role in our culture than Tumblr did.

The biggest barrier to Twitter losing users that I’ve experienced over the past week: where should we go instead? There’s no obvious choice. But that leaves a wide open spot for someone to come along and do Twitter better than Twitter.