Wave 4 of social media is already 17 years old. That was when Twitter initially came online.

Interestingly, Twitter was established before the smartphone went mainstream.

It was 140 characters because it had to be carried through SMS, and SMS had a limitation of 160 characters.

And the service wasn’t easy to use at first.

Obviously, all waves of social media were accompanied by big leaps forward in Internet technology.

Wave 1: Internet
Wave 2: HTTP
Wave 3: AJAX
Wave 4: Mobile
Wave 5: Self-hosting

It’s my belief that the “appification” of client-server software combined with inexpensive hosting will be a game changer.

Self-hosting obviously has bigger ramifications beyond social media.

Here's examples of self-hosted services that are downright revolutionary:

1. Nextcloud - File hosting
2. Etherpad - Notes
3. Moodle - Learning
4. Gitea - Coding
5. Collabora - Office

Not only is this software you can host yourself, it is getting less expensive and easier to use!

Beyond social media, what are the practical reasons people will want to self-host instead of pay for SaaS? Here's some reasons:

1. Most people own multiple devices. Client-server software makes managing content easier

2. Self-hosting is cheaper than SaaS -- especially when devices like the Raspberry Pi are involved.

3. Ownership of data. When you self-host, it's with the assurance that your data is truly your data.

But what happens when you add decentralization into the mix?

Mastodon is obviously the most famous example of ActivityPub integration.

But what's just as exciting to me is that WordPress, Nextcloud and Gitea are working towards including ActivityPub into their apps.

Certainly, both apps are already collaborative in nature. But once ActivityPub is turned on, they become decentralized *social media*.

That's the real revolution right there.

The possibilities for decentralized social media are endless. Imagine ActivityPub integration with self-hosted:

1. Calendar
2. Presentations
3. Project management
4. Wikis
5. Games

The Internet has now become exciting again!

The move to decentralization and self-hosting is going to kill a lot of big companies.

This always happens when there's a big shift in technology.

For example, Kodak couldn't survive the shift to digital cameras.

Sun Microsystems couldn't survive the shift to LAMP stacks.

Nokia couldn't survive the shift to smartphones.

The same will happen during this next technological shift. The first casualty will probably be Twitter -- but I suspect Meta won't be able to survive either.

I point out Kodak, Sun, and Nokia because they all have stuff in common: they were killed by a technology they pioneered.

* Kodak invented digital cameras
* Sun Microsystems pioneered web apps with Java applets
* Nokia released Communicator 9000 in 1996 -- one of the first smartphones ever

Each of these companies saw the future but they could not adapt.

Now what I find fascinating about Wave 5 of social media (decentralization) is that Twitter saw it coming.

Bluesky was spun out from Twitter in 2019.

In fact, Bluesky's first (maybe current?) CTO was Parag Agrawal -- who later became Twitter's CEO prior to Elon Musk's acquisition.

Nevertheless -- just like Kodak, Sun, and Nokia before it -- Twitter will not survive the next technology shift.

Why is this?

A good book on this topic is The Innovator's Dilemma.

Basically, Kodak, Sun, and Nokia lost marketshare because they sought to make high quality products for EXISTING customers.

Meanwhile, their competitors chased after "low value customers" with poorly developed technology.

Nevertheless, that poorly developed technology was iterated until it was able to go toe-to-toe with incumbents.

Does this sound familiar? That's Twitter and Meta right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

Right now, Twitter is making the same mistake that Kodak, Sun, and Nokia made.

Elon Musk is chasing after what he believes is "high value customers" with what he believes is a superior product.

This is why he's charging $42,000/month for access to Twitter's API.

For now, Twitter might be a superior product to Mastodon. Maybe -- that's arguable.

But the tech that underlies Mastodon has been iterated, and now it's beginning to go toe-to-toe with Twitter.

When it comes to Wave 5 of social media, here's the crux of Twitter (and Meta's) problem:

1 They must manage a big, unwieldy centralized infrastructure

2. They must keep current "high value customers" happy

3. By pivoting to decentralized social media, they must make the deliberate decision to kill their current cash cows

Can they pivot?

That's possible. Apple pivoted from iPod to iPhone -- killing their cash cow in the process.

But it's extremely unlikely.

One thing I will say about decentralized social media is that we don't know where it will end up.

For example, when the first smartphones came out, they came with physical QWERTY keyboards. Now they're input with touchscreens.

Right now, decentralized social networks look like Twitter duplicated across multiple servers. But it will evolve into something substantially different in time.

The problem with chasing after "high value customers" is that they know what they want.

Concurrently, they don't know what hasn't been invented yet -- they're not considering future innovations.

Back in the 19th century, if you asked someone what they wanted in terms of better transportation, most of them would have said "a faster horse".

Elon Musk's focus is on people who are paying for Twitter.

Who are Twitter's "high value customers"? Advertisers.

What advertisers want is a better advertising system.

They don't give a damn about decentralized social media because there's no centralized system that feeds people ads. Mastodon can't help them.

Twitter advertisers are like folks in the 19th century who are demanding a faster horse.

Guess what? The proverbial horse will soon be put to pasture.