Is Twitter Dying?

Social media in general are dying. Facebook, Reddit they are of little use anymore. But YouTube and Linkedin still offer great marketing opportunities.

Personally, I don't think so. Maybe I'm biased because I really enjoy using it.

Twitter is often used as a primary source of breaking news, as well as a platform for public figures and organizations to communicate with their followers. I think it's still the strongest platform out there for this. TikTok and Instagram are also strong but I would say not as strong as Twitter.

From personal use, there is so much wealth of information and knowledge especially in our domain: tech, marketing, startups etc. People have flocked to Mastodon indeed, but I still think Twitter is standing strong.

I'm hoping they will prioritize some amazing features. The introduction of of Spaces for example is a great one. I don't personally use it much at the moment but I don't see why not.

In terms of SaaS owners using Twitter as their primary marketing channel, I would be surprised if this is true for scale-ups. For indie hackers and small startups, I still think it's one of the best tools out there.

All in all, I wouldn't bet against Twitter but

Is Twitter Dying? Well lets hope so.

It's dying, but much more slowly than I would have guessed. I know a handful of ex-twitter employees who have had to watch the thing-they-worked-on get the axe, for better or worse.

Ultimately, I think the end of twitter will be monetary, but I am convinced that the fiscal downturn will be at least partly driven by moral imperative.

There's no shortage of legal real trouble coming elon's way, and while twitter is also pulling on his purse strings, it can't feel great:

• https://news.yahoo.com/more-ex-tweeps-sue-twitter-110500183.html
• https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/04/twitter-netzdg-germany/
• https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musks-2018-tweet-tesla-union-campaign-illegal-us-court-rules-2023-03-31/

I think so, under the leadership of Musk.

-building in public
-shipping quickly
-low-to-no employees
-boldly charging for services

As an indie hacker, what's not to like??

I just read this interesting article on it 5 minutes ago, which doesn't make things look good: https://every.to/p/how-much-longer-can-twitter-last-really

i have already moved to mastodon

Twitter does not seem to be dying. Twitter has a large user base of over 300 million monthly active users and continues to be a popular platform for sharing news, information, and opinions. Yes it is facing some major changes but I don't think so personally.

Let's see in one month.
During the next days :

• old API app won't work anymore, let's see if dev will implement the new API (musk does not care about the dev community, so let's see the if the dev community will follow the lead or not)
• feed will change (only tweets by paid people will be pushed in user's feed)
• need to be a paid user to vote

I think that yes, twitter will start dying. And the dream of musk to make twitter the best app (like wechat & co) won't ever be live (musk doesn't care about the devs, so why devs will use the app...they will need to see a real value)

I may sound biased, but I think it is dying. I never liked it personally either, and I never really used it except for a few days on different ocassions.

I wouldn't be confident in thinking it will die because of radical changes. I heard that the idea is to make Twitter the biggest competitor of big news outlets which I think is a good angle to look at SM business. I have 0 experience in those types of businesses but Musk does have a great record of creating meaningful businesses.

In any case, I'm super curious how this ends up.

It is on its last breath.

It lost credibility as a platform to build tools on.
Unstable.
Tries to earn with Ads AND premium access.
You are paying and you are the product.
Competition is not sleeping.
Influencers are moving away.

Will it actually die? Not for real. IMO, it will slowly extinguish itself and remain as a sort of niche/fringe subsection of the Internet.

I don't think it's dying. I personally think it changed from the legacy app that some people used as a diary, others as the channel for queries and complaints to public companies, and others used as way to argue with folks that don't share their ideas and political views.

Now it's more active than ever and it has more of the "right" kind of people since most dweebs moved over to Mastodon. It's also THE app for creators and personal brands, something that can't be done on other platforms.

Of course, it's far from ideal. But if were to pick between it and Facebook, Instagram, (or God forbids) Tiktok... I think the choice is obvious.

Lotta things to consider here. Good, bad, and uncertainties:

• We as humans deserve ethical social media. Today's "social media" is not social media at all, it's entirely social manipulation.
• Twitter collapsing would be a great step forward in rebuilding the internet.
• Restricting the API over time (and even more recently) has proven to be a detrimental strategy.
• The business model of data mining, harvesting, and manipulation that these platforms are trapped in needs to die. So charging for the service is actually a good thing, but the way Twitter's doing it isn't eliminating all the data mining and harvesting, so it's like a double/triple dip instead.
• Open sourcing is good and crucial to longevity.
• People love to say "I can't believe this app is free" even though it isn't. It's dangerous to perpetuate this ideology, because nothing is free.
• Social media might compete with itself (and copy features), but they have a lotta shared interests, and freely share our information with each other. This shouldn't happen.
• Network effects are insanely powerful, and we break them down either by 1) coordinating mass migration efforts, or 2) chipping away at them. I see people commenting on Signal's tweets saying, "I wanna use Signal, but not too many people I talk to use Signal..." Well guess what? The same way Chamath was growing Facebook by forcing you to get to 7 friends in 7 days, that's the same way these things snowball. So go to Mastodon. Connect with people there. Little by little.
• The irony is that people with big followings are the ones who have the most influence and can choose to tell people about these problems, about better alternatives, about demanding better social media, yet because they have these large followings on one platform, they don't wanna move to another because then they're no longer "influencers" or whatever you wanna call em. It's a huge hit to the ego for them to have to start from scratch.

Twitter is dying for what year already.. :) But there's still no better alternative. It should be fine

Frankly I don't think anytime soon. Yes there are many changes taking place and many will be bad and or average while some may be good. But as i see currently there is no other conversation driven platform which can take on twitter. And there is no guarantee that changes will not happen on those platforms. We live with what we have and try to game the system.

Just came across a very well written article where the recent changes in the algo have been explained in an insightful manner and with clear cut steps that one can take to keep up with these changes.

I found it to be very helpful and hope you do too. Sharing the link below

https://tinyurl.com/y6twfc34

I'm receiving push notifications for totally irrelevant tweets. Most of them are related to Indian cinema. Not really sure how it picked that. Several times, I went to the app and marked them as irrelevant but it still keep sending them to me. Finally, I had to delete the twitter app cos I got the feeling like it is no longer a well functioning product.

Yes, yes it is.

Twitter is cool, but tough to get ahead on. Promoters there use multiple accounts and are pros at list building.

Elon has said we have a right to speech but not necessarily reach.

I have about 1200 followers there, and am growing faster now that I am in the ChatGPT and ChatGPT Plugins space.

However, it can be a time waster I feel.

It needs to be combined with other platforms such as podcasting and youtube for faster results.

Elon is smart, he is going to force everyone to spend money with him, instead of with substack, ghost etc.

So predict a hit happening for those platforms.

Its not dying, I think he (elon) thinks he is smarter than he actually is.
Changes at that level should be done carefully. He just went ahead and did a bunch o stuff.
Still hundreds of millions of users. Mastodon is not going to replace it.

Far from it. Then numbers speak for themselves.

No. Check the data.

It's difficult to say definitively whether Twitter is dying or not, as opinions on the matter vary depending on who you ask. However, there are some indicators that suggest that Twitter may be facing some challenges in terms of growth and engagement.

For example, Twitter's user growth has slowed down significantly in recent years, with the platform adding only a few million users each quarter compared to the double-digit growth rates it saw in its earlier years. Additionally, Twitter's stock price has been relatively stagnant, and the platform has faced criticism for issues related to harassment, misinformation, and content moderation.

Despite these challenges, Twitter remains a popular platform for many people, particularly those in media, politics, and other high-profile industries. Whether or not Twitter will continue to be a dominant social media platform in the years to come remains to be seen, but it's clear that the platform is facing some challenges that it will need to address in order to remain relevant and competitive.

Hey there! It looks like Twitter's recent efforts to limit API usage are having a big impact on both regular users and SaaS products that rely on Twitter analytics. This could potentially lead to users having to pay more for the same services from a few select SaaS providers, which could ultimately create a monopoly in the market - unless Twitter decides to build their own analytics and generative AI tools for Twitter growth. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the long run!

Twitter is dying.
I've noticed that the gay Chicago and New York communities have stopped posting as often this year, and their posts basically determine gay meme culture for the entire platform, which is a big origin of the larger American meme culture.
I've also noticed that it is trendy to delete Twitter accounts.

but how do you grow on this new twitter?

I think it's natural for Elon to try to make Twitter a profitable company. Like any other company on the planet, it needs to make money to survive. The reason why today's developments surprise people is probably because Twitter used to be an investment-oriented company, not a profit-oriented company.

I don't think switching to an alternative platform is reasonable. Most of the people who are interesting to follow are still on Twitter.

There are many alternative for twitter, but still every SaaS owners dont want to lose their twitter.

There is a great community of developers and Indie Hackers that I follow on twitter that post a lot of useful information. I believe that not until there may be a better alternative to twitter, it is not going to die. But I have not tried Mastodon, I may be wrong about my perspective of a better alternative to twitter.

Twitter itself is ok, can't say the same for businesses built on top of Twitter, specially indies. I would not start a new "x for Twitter" product now.

I hope not, I'm still trying to build my following. 😅

Twitter is fcking dead sadly. they messed up their damn API, he's pushed legitimate apps off the damn API, so fck Twitter. I have one of my PH discussions knowbody reads I guess because they too negative: https://www.producthunt.com/discussions/its-time-for-a-new-twitter

I've found it increasingly difficult to build up a following on Twitter since all of the changes. I don't know whether that means people will give up on using it to promote themselves or their products, but certainly seems like more than ever it is becoming important to have your own audience through newsletter subscriptions or something similar so that you don't have to rely on the giant platforms to communicate with your followers.

@antovtok Personally, I don't think it's possible, but I believe it's gaining value again because it's now the era of technology and the young generation is a fan of Elon Musk. He is undoubtedly manipulating most of the popular and leading industries.

In my opinion, it cannot be possible to imagine the Twitter logo changed to Dogecoin and the price of Dogecoin increasing by 20% in the next 12 hours. This person has great power over different industries like Starlink, SpaceX, Tesla, and now Twitter.

I don't think so. I don't know of any platform (besides Reddit) that is as useful as Twitter, especially for technically oriented people. But I agree with you, the API pricing is totally sick.

Elon bought the platform, he can change things around. So yes people will complain. It is what it is.

I am using twitter to share my articles from https://ehsaasprogram.net.pk/ehsaas-app/ and I am getting amazing results so far. So, I can say twitter is not going anywhere

Twitter has never been alive as much as this year. Love it or hate it, it’s shining and is unique as a platform especially compared to Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn where discoverability is near impossible. In my humble opinion, those who says it’s dying are Musk-haters who are in disbelief. The polarization of the acquisition just made it even more active and organic engagement has never been this high. You don’t have to buy ads on Twitter to grow unlike any other platform. Many communities are thriving and will continue to thrive. Indiemakers are even making a living off the platform and communities such as #buildinpublic couldn’t be possible anywhere else. It is the only social media I still use and care about and is an oasis in the middle of the blend corporative horizon.