danah boydI've been thinking a lot about Twitter and failure lately. And the absurdist Gladiator spectacle that we're all watching. I decided to turn it into a blog post: https://zephoria.medium.com/what-if-failure-is-the-plan-2f219ea1cd62
Scott M. StolzI am not sure what Elon's true aim is, but shedding some of the audience might be part of the plan. After all, a profitable company with fewer users is better than a unprofitable company with 396.5 million users. As long as he can keep a loyal core and make money on advertising, that might work.
Especially if you factor in that the former Twitter CEO is creating Bluesky, a decentralized social media platform. If Twitter sheds some users, but then federates with Bluesky or even ActivityPub, it might actually be able to turn a profit despite a lower user count.
What's new in this era is that federation is an option, and could even be enough to break its fall. Lower infrastructure costs, but still have access to nearly 400 million users via federation anyway.... Hmmm.