I have suggested for some time that Twitter should have a “Media” Tab that was devoted to video, podcasts, GIFs and images. While we didn’t get something so comprehensive, we will get a “Video” Tab within the next 24 hours, apparently.
I have, in the past, made a lot of videos that I have put on Twitter and I wonder if this new Video tab will make it easier for people to find them. I have no friends and no one likes me, so sometimes the only outlet I have for my extrovert nature is to make a video where I ramble about this or that thing.
It will be interesting to see if any of the new videos I upload to Twitter will get more traction than those in the past. In the past, I’ve only gotten about 20 views at best, while on Tik-Tok I’ve gotten 10 times that.
Anyway. This is something fun-interesting going on in the world for once.
The WELL was an early high end online service. You had to pay for it and I was in college at the time, I use the free Usenet instead — a lot. But I think of The WELL these days because of Bluesky, the Twitter clone.
Bluesky is good to great, but it seems — at least to me — to have a bit of WELL problem. It is so busy smelling its own farts that it can be something of a turn off to a member of the unwashed hoards like me.
But given how shitty Twitter has become these days, there’s not much choice, I guess. I also like Threads, but the quality of discussion is a tick better on The WELL, I mean Bluesky.
I totally given up on Twitter. I now only use it out of habit. I hate it — and it’s overwrought fascism — totally and completely. I am going to try to be more proactive using BlueSky and Threads.
But both of those services have their problems.
I just want the old Twitter — with all its problems — back.
Elon Musk is not very adept in business if he can’t see what is obvious — he could use Twitter’s established userbase to corner the consumer-facing AI market.
Now, there are signs he’s thinking about this because an Grok prompt is now organic to the X / Twitter app. But why not collapse all these features into one whereby you could absolutely not avoid seeing Grok when you tweeted. There would be one central hub UX whereby you would have the option to use Grok when before you wanted to tweet something.
Or something.
If you made Grok free and sold ads against people’s use of it like you do now with tweets then, there you go, you make a lot of money. AND you get a lot of buzz from the fact that about 200 million users use Grok as their native AI without having to go anywhere else.
It’s a very simple solution to a number of structural problems facing Twitter at the moment. Change the name to GrokX and get all that buzz AND you instantly become a name brand AI service for average people who use Twitter on a regular basis but only vaguely even know of the other AI options out there.
But what do I know. Just because it’s obvious and easy to do, doesn’t mean anyone will listen to me.
Now that Elon Musk has changed Twitter’s name, I can begin to imagine a scenario whereby he might manage to turn “X” into the “everything app.” He has vision, if nothing else.
But there is a huge obstacle to this particular situation — AI.
All this talk of turning X into the “everything app” seems very 2012, very passe. The AI era is careening towards us at an alarming rate and I would suggest that by late 2024 the effects of AI will start to be seen in the economy. All this talk of social media will be rather moot.
There was a moment in time when if Musk was doing what he’s doing now with Twitter / X that it really could put a “dent in the universe” but, lulz, I have my doubts now. In fact, if Musk really wants to do something interesting with X, I would propose he made an AI prompt native to the service. Now THAT would be a way to propel X to next-level status.
It definitely will be interesting to see how things play out. It’s at least possible that there really is a -very narrow – window of opportunity for Musk to transform Twitter / X into an “everything app.”
It’s definitely interesting how people are getting so excited about Threads when it’s just a less-feature-rich Twitter clone that happens to be fused to Instagram. That’s it. There’s nothing all that great about it –but for one thing: it has a a lot of people (already) the vibe is really good.
Just my opinion, folks.
That’s it — that’s all Threads has going for it — people and vibes.
It’s not like there’s any particularly interesting feature set that might make people choose it over Twitter. I mean, I’ve come up with a really cool, really feature rich social media platform that no one cares about, so lulz.
Anyway.
I suspect everyone should really just enjoy the good vibes while they last. Put enough humans in the same space virtually and all hell is going to break loose eventually. If I had to make a bet, I would suspect that it’s probably going to be Trump coming to the service that ultimately turns it into just another Twitter. Or, it might be a lot more gradual.
It could be that all the smug liberal infotainment types spooging their pants over Threads will gradually realize they hate it just as it becomes a Twitter clone on a vibe basis, too. People are so dumb. They act like This Is The End of Social Media History and they have nothing to worry about ever again when it comes to how hateful social media is. All they have to do is just use Threads and they will have an eternal 2012 to enjoy.
I got no beef with Reddit. Live long and prosper, you Usenet knock off. But I do think it’s telling that if both Twitter and Reddit implode that my personal vision for a service that uses updated Usenet UX / UI concepts becomes something more viable.
If I was smart enough — which I’m not — I would somehow figure out a way to use AI to design my dream platform that is based on Groups and allows for pull page posts and robust threading.
And…yet…that moment has passed. It’s just not viable anymore. We’re now in the age of XR, crypto and AI. Lulz. No one gives a shit about something as quaint and prosaic as a social media platform…based on a 30 year old concept no one cares about anymore.
Anyway. I do wish there was something a bit more like Usenet out there to use. I think by the time Reddit came around I was just too old to be willing to wade into its many subcultures. And I was so weened on Usenet back in the day that neither Twitter nor Reddit really appealed to me.
I’m old and I hate it.
Godspeed, Reddit. I hope you figure out all your API bullshit.
I’ve given it some reflection and it definitely seems as though Space Karen could surprise us all and do something pretty amazing with Twitter. At its heart, Twitter is a text-based system with a prompt. It seems obvious that you could somehow rig up a chatbot natively and organically to the service’s existing UX and do something astonishing.
I’m not smart enough to figure out the specifics just yet — like, how you would make money . But imagine you sit down in front of Twitter 2.0 and instead of turning to Google to answer a question, you ask a Twitter LLM whatever it is you want. Just a back-of-the-envelope imagining of this concept suggests that the possibilities are endless.
If you could make a Twitter LLM compelling enough, people might even be willing to pay for it. Or something. I still am very dubious about the idea that you’ll be able to turn LLMs into subscription services. That seems like a daydream of the elite who don’t want to have to put up with something as pedestrian as ads.
But if you could fuse the existing Twitter userbase with a LLM, it’s a very intriguing idea. For no other reason than Twitter would be adding to its existing service, rather than having to eat its own, like, say Google. All of this is fast moving target, so it could all go a lot of different ways.
One of the mysteries of the tech world at the moment is what, exactly, Space Karen is up to with Twitter. While sometimes it feels like Space Karen might just pull the plug on the whole operation out of pique, more likely he would turn around and sell Twitter at a massive loss.
But, as I’ve said before, there is definitely a window of opportunity for someone to come up with a better mouse trap in the near-realtime discussion space. But it’s extremely narrow. You would have to strike almost immediately — things like AI and AR / VR are about to dramatically revolutionize everything.
I still think that if you cherrypicked the best UX elements of the old Usenet discussion service, you could really rock the world in a very quick manner. But, alas, it’s dawned on me that I should just shut up and work on my novel when it comes to shit like that.
It could be that even if Twitter “dies” it will all be moot because we’ll be wearing Apple VR / AR headsets that replace how we interact with media altogether. Or, hell, we might even be wearing mindcaps as far as I know.
There’s just no juice in social media. There’s definitely a need for a Twitter-like service without the baggage of Space Karen, but it could be that, like most things in life, we’ll just muddle through. But I do think that we’re in the process of lurching forward into a new, uncertain technological future that will change the everyday life of the average person in ways we can only barely begin to imagine.
There are, at last count, now two viable Twitter clones vying for the attention the many people fed up with Elon Musk’s shenanigans. Both Post and Spoutable seem to believe that the path to success is to lean into being a “safe space” for center-Left people.
From what I can tell, however, both services are kind of missing the point. It seems what people want is not a “woke” version of Twitter, but Twitter without Elon Musk. They have certain end-user experience expectations and if they don’t get that, they complain — even if they’re center-Left.
For instance, Spoutable, which is, in my opinion, the Twitter clone that clones Twitter the best, is apparently having a big problem with well-meaning people wanting to post things the service considers “porn.” So, you the squeaky wheels of sex workers and erotica writers screaming at the top of their lungs about how much Spoutable sucks….just as Spoutable is trying to pounce on fleeing Twitter users.
The solution is to give people what they want when it comes to Twitter — an almost no holds barred freeforall where you just come to expect that you’re going to have to block half a dozen people before dawn for being totally, completely insane and malicious.
So, I’m really enjoying Spoutable, but I’m a bit concerned that it will ultimately be just another social media flash in the pan.
There is some chatter about some former Twitter employees working on their own Twitter clone that I have a lot of hope for. If anyone can get a Twitter clone right, it should be them.
I will note in passing, of course, that I still think one could cherry pick the UX principles of the old Usenet News to create a service that would be a lot better than Twitter and would, in fact, explode with popularity if you just were able to implement it.
But I fear that particular delusional daydream of mine is just not going to happen.
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