In Defense of Twitter

Twitter is a disaster, but it can be saved

Twitter’s stock price was down more than 10% today, as a short seller took aim at the social network it calls “the Harvey Weinstein of social media,” due to abusive Tweets as detailed in an Amnesty International report¹.

This is on top of a bad day earlier this week when a minor issue was surfaced related to Twitter’s support form, which may have been compromised by China and Saudi Arabia.

But let’s be honest: while these are convenient “catalysts” (in stock market parlance), they aren’t the reasons the stock is being shorted. A robust platform will be able to flag trolls and secure the support form.

The reason Twitter is under threat is that usage is declining. Last quarter, worldwide monthly active users declined by 4 million, to a total of 326 million, which is not even a large baseline number compared to other networks, like Instagram, which has over 1 billion monthly active users.

This bird ain’t flyin’. Source: Twitter Investor Relations

And while there are glimmers of hope, like Twitter’s continued growth in daily active users, better monetization and revenue metrics, and the resulting arrival of profitability, the shadow of declining usage is an existential threat. Because if usage continues to decline, the company will not only lose advertisers, eroding its revenue, but it will lose the people who invest content into the platform. It will lose its voices. It will enter a death spiral.

Twitter has blamed this declining usage on its work “improving the health” of the platform, which is code for removing fake/abusive accounts. But a healthier platform should be a growing one, especially from a base of around 300 million users in a world of over 3 billion internet users (and growing, unlike Twitter).

So why is Twitter’s usage declining? As Facebook hits the skids, and populist politicians make Twitter the cornerstone of their communications strategies, Twitter should be having a moment. But it’s stumbling.

Why? Because the product isn’t improving.

Product problems

Many people have written about Twitter. In fact, there are about six articles on Google titled “In Defense of Twitter” from the past few years. Casey Newton parodies Twitter as the Bluth Company — a comedy of errors and non-stop bad execution.

I’m not a Twitter power user. And I’m definitely not an expert commentator (as you probably already gathered). But I’m surprised Twitter hasn’t captured the zeitgeist of the moment — to offer an alternative to Facebook, and to truly claim its vital role in public discourse.

In spite of these opportunities, the product remains the same — a confusing, noisy jumble of character-limited, out-of-context soundbites.

Here are just a few of the problems:

• It’s overwhelming. If you follow more than 30 active users, your feed is unmanageable. You can’t possibly see everything there is to see — so why even try? Scrolling feels futile.
• It’s intimidating. I don’t ordinarily have a problem with anxiety — until I try to post on Twitter. It’s scary as shit. You can’t edit your typo. You get ripped apart if you say something wrong. Or, scariest of all, you get no engagement with your Tweet at all… and you feel a deep sense of failure. Was it my timing? Am I not smart? Does everyone hate me?
• It’s exhausting. You’re constantly context-switching. You’re reading about economics, now Trump, now seeing a funny joke, now back to Trump, now trying to understand a meme. Why exert all of this mental effort when you can look at pretty pictures on Instagram?
• It’s confusing. None of us have any idea why we’re seeing anything on Twitter — we’ve ceded our attention to opaque algorithms. What is the difference between “hearting” and “retweeting”? I see things a lot of people hearted, and I see things lots of people retweeted — in my feed and in my notifications tab. If we switch back to the “recency feed,” the most-frequent and noisy Tweeters, usually brands, will always capture the most attention. And replies, especially on threads, are a mess.
• It’s out of control. Specifically, out of my control. I can choose who I follow, but I can’t choose who I see (see above point). I can’t differentiate between people who I care about, and people who I’m only mildly interested in.
• It’s fake. There are counts all over the place — counts of followers, counts of tweets, counts of hearts — and it’s often fake. You can buy these numbers. Russia can make them move on a dime. These are vanity metrics, but they also signal to users who or what is important. In many cases these numbers are manipulated, or they are vestiges of when Twitter was a different product and had a different userbase.

With all of these problems, maybe the short sellers are onto something.

The Trump card

Twitter has problems, but the fact that it’s still fluttering along, now profitably, shows that is also has some strong assets — most notably, that it is the only viable one-to-many platform.

One-to-one communication is dominated by email and text-messaging (both of which, thankfully, still are cross-platform — the parochialism!). Many-to-many platforms are proliferating, led by group messaging apps and Slack, but they only work when you keep the Antifa in a separate channel from the Proud Boys.

When it comes to one-to-many communication, assuming that Facebook is in secular decline, there is only Twitter. And, ultimately, we need a one-to-many platform.

We need a way to hear, first-hand, what people are saying. Whether they are politicians, journalists, business leaders, or maybe even Kardashians. And for a platform like this to work, we need those people — the ones with the ideas — to buy in. There is no upstart platform that seems capable of unseating Twitter in this respect. Instagram may work for the Kardashians, but, at its core, is still about photos and vanity, not ideas. Mastodon doesn’t have the audience to merit influencers investing their time.

Ironically, in our hyper-algorithmic society, the most important safeguard of truth, freedom, and understanding are real human voices.

But what about the trolls? Twitter has a troll problem because it is valuable.

And Trump (the most powerful troll?) will keep using Twitter. Top journalists and celebrities will also use it — to advance their brands, and to have substantive public conversations. Twitter is becoming more than the place to share news articles; Twitter is the news.

The challenge is to make the news digestible.

Getting the worm, late

Twitter is probably already doing all the things that an outside observer would suggest, like:

• Recognize that there are two types of users–Tweet-writers, and Tweet-readers. And within the readers, there are frequent readers, and occasional readers. Fix the platform for the occasional readers. This is the biggest group of potential Twitter users. Stop encouraging users to contribute (often uninspiring) content, and instead help them consume content from people who really have something to say.
• Decide if we should follow 30 people, or 3,000 people, and make the product work for that pattern of usage. If we should follow 3,000 people, suggest groups, like top commentators, that we can bulk-follow, and allow us to identify the people who are really important — people who we don’t want to miss.
• Get us out of the weeds. Provide dashboards of who Tweeted, and how much, so we can jump ahead to people we care about. Surface top-shared links and other structured information.
• Think outside the Tweet. Why does Twitter have a character limit at all? Why does Twitter have “threads” with disjointed replies, where every sentence can be taken out of context, and where every sentence is “voted on” via hearts? Allow long-form Tweets, with a character-limited preview for the feed, so that ideas can be expressed holistically.
• Really think outside the Tweet. Content comes in many different mediums, and Twitter should do all of them well, including images, video, and dynamic content like polls... and it is making progress. But it should think well beyond this — for example, why doesn’t Twitter do public events that anyone can RSVP to (and/or share)? That’s the only reason many people are still using Facebook.
• Embrace adults. Teenagers will be on some ephemeral new platform; they won’t be flocking to Twitter — Twitter should focus on building a product for adults instead. Twitter should reduce the vanity metrics, like constantly displaying counts of hearts or followers. Stop making Twitter feel like a Middle School popularity contest. And just as importantly, be transparent with how the Twitter feed works. Treat users as intelligent humans.
• Show the people I trust. Twitter is already too noisy with stuff from people who I explicitly follow… so why am I seeing so many trolls and randoms? Whitelist replies, searches, and hashtags to the people I follow first, then the people they follow, and put the Russian bots in a drawer.

I’m sure there are many more fruitful ideas. They’re probably on Twitter.

Can Twitter change?

This is the $20 billion question (TWTR’s current market cap). Or maybe the $200 billion question, if things go well (2/3 of FB’s current market cap).

The bear case on Twitter is that it hasn’t changed very much in years, and that’s puzzling. Maybe there is technical or organizational debt. Maybe they don’t have the right people. Maybe they’re afraid of destroying what they already have.

But fear will intensify if Twitter continues to be recalcitrant. The internet has a way of disrupting itself, and new platforms could emerge, or existing platforms like Facebook (probably via Instagram) could encroach on Twitter’s territory.

Competition has a way of forcing re-inventions.

Twitter has been down before.

But I think Twitter will change for another reason. Of all the social networks, Twitter has some of the smartest, most thoughtful communities discussing important ideas. Twitter isn’t just for one-liners; it’s a place where real debates are happening and real changes are incubating. I believe it’s these communities that will save Twitter — by pushing the company to improve the platform for them, and also encouraging it to do things that will enable them to reach broader audiences.

There is another change that needs to happen: Twitter’s story. To re-engage millions of inactive accounts, or, more likely, new accounts from people who’ve heard of Twitter and may-or-may-not have already tried it, Twitter needs to change the way it is perceived. It’s not just a social network, where you share your daily musings with your friends; it’s a one-to-many communication platform to hear important voices in our world directly.

And who doesn’t want to be on that platform?

Disclosures: I’m long Twitter stock, and I bought more today. I am also building an app that connects to Twitter to better surface top content from their platform. It’s free and you should try it: https://mendoapp.com

¹If Twitter is the Harvey Weinstein, what are the other networks?