Xitter is the CNN of Social Media
Peter KafkaDespite the best efforts of those in charge of it now (and then too!), Xitter is not dead yet, as the events of the past week or so have highlighted. I like Peter Kafka's framing:
Ultimately, I think the correct way to describe Twitter's current status is less of a full-blown revival and more of a time-based uptick — the way news channels like CNN will see a spike around big events, then sink down to modest ratings when things settle down. Which was always one of the core pitches for Twitter to begin with.
I've shifted my social media diet to be Threads-first, but when major events are happening – like, say, an assassination attempt, or a sitting President bowing out of a re-election campaign – Xitter still, sadly, cannot be beat. It's both a network issue – more journalists/pundits/info junkies are still using than Threads – and a product issue – while Threads is getting better at serving up information in real time, it's still not, well, Xitter.
This was once again on display with the President Biden news over the weekend. I learned about the news from a push notification from an account I follow on Xitter for breaking news. That account is not on Threads. But I have notifications on for other news-y accounts on Threads, but Xitter beat all of those to the punch by several minutes. Worse, when I loaded up Threads just minutes after seeing the news it was just random algorithmic stuff from the past day. Even when I refreshed, I got just general updates. Even a couple hours later, just some Serenity Now from no less than Mark Zuckeberg.
My description of the problem from May has perhaps never been more apt:
If Xitter is like a crazy uncle on crystal meth, Threads is like an out-to-lunch aunt who hasn’t read a newspaper in weeks.
In our age of real time chaos, I simply must choose the meth-head uncle versus out-to-lunch aunt.
Following up on this point around Threads first birthday, I wrote:
It's one of those things that's hard to describe, but even right now, loading up the two, Xitter feels more "alive" than Threads. Perhaps it's as simple as the aforementioned real-time elements – or that so much of Xitter now seems solely based around real-time (and often ripped off) memes – but Threads is more like a lazy river versus Xitter's frenzied white water rapids.
People get really mad on Threads when you point this out because it's the internet and people get mad about the dumbest stuff that they feel aligned with but actually don't give a shit about them. They yell at you for now following the right accounts or curating your feed correctly. It's a user error, you see. All I know is what I see on the two networks. On one when a major event happens, it lights up in absolute real time with information. On the other, it lazily rolls out of bed and after making and having the coffee, it gets to work. But still is half-assing it the whole morning.
All of that is to say: Threads needs a real-time mode. The app famously won't let you default to 'Following' but I think it needs even more than that for times like this. It should have a switch or an area where you get information flowing in real time about big events. I know it's not an easy problem, but I also know this is Meta, a service which handles the information flow for billions of users across their other networks. A company worth over $1T.
Xitter, a company worth closer to $0 than $1T these days, continues to eat their lunch in this regard. And maybe they don't care. They say they kind of do, but sure act like they don't. They want to be the text-based home for creators, or something. No one wants or needs that. What people need is a real time information network. Twitter filled that need. Xitter continues to in spurts, but then quickly devolves into conspiracy nonsense and memes. I get that this need may not be for a billion+ users and so that's not very interesting to Meta, but it's an influential need – as you can see by all the stories in the past few days about Xitter being "back".
It's why Ezra Klein came back, as he told Kafka:
"It's true that I was off Twitter for two years, then back for a few weeks, and am back off of it now. For me, Twitter is a kind of trade-off: When I use it, I'm more plugged-in to rapidly shifting waves of sentiment, and less able to think clearly, deeply and independently. If I'd been on Twitter intensely in February, I'm not sure I'd have done my original series on why Biden should step aside. But the past few weeks have really required plugging in to rapidly shifting waves of sentiment!
I try to see it as a tool. I don't think it's good for the way I think most of the time. But there are moments when you need to think that way.
I do think you see something else here: Threads said they didn't want to be the place for news, and boy, did they get their wish."
This shouldn't be so hard.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler