I said that this morning to Kyle. That the golden age of Twitter is over. I couldn’t think of a more eloquent way to put it. The Twitter we fell in love with is actually gone already. It no longer exists at all. In fact, it is tough to even see the remnants of that Twitter at this point.
I think what is gone from Twitter is far more multi-layered than what Frank Chimero published today in From the Porch to the Street — but, the main point he does hit is right on the money.
We concede that there is some value to Twitter, but the social musing we did early on no longer fits.
And…
Here’s the frustration: if you’ve been on Twitter a while, it’s changed out from under you.
And…
It’s tempting to give an importance to the service for those of us who joined early and were able to reap these benefits, but that doesn’t mean Twitter needs to stick around forever. It matters. Or mattered. To me, I’m unsure which just yet.
I’m pretty sure that Twitter still matters. Just look at #Ferguson or #MH370 or the like. The world needs Twitter. The Twitter of today — the truly global broadcasting tool that works everywhere and on just about any device — is so much more powerful than the public chatroom it was in November 2006 when I signed up. But I still miss that chatroom and probably always will. The Twitter of 2006-2010 isn’t coming back. It never will. It is something different now.
That version of Twitter is buried in the same graveyard as the early days of blogging, the heyday of TV news, the radio, and newspapers. The world is moving quicker and that which we love changes much faster now. That which lasted decades now lasts years or sometimes months before being acquired, shutdown, or morphing into an advertising platform.
We just have to live with it, adapt, and move on. Or, start yelling “get off my lawn.”