Is Twitter Dying? Analyzing #RIPTwitter

Reactions, Facts, and Speculation

BuzzFeed broke the news this past Friday that Twitter would be introducing an algorithmic timeline within days of the leak. The new feed would utilize Twitter’s “While you were away…” feature that prioritizes Tweets with a large amount of engagement.

The news would cause #RIPTwitter to go trending within a few short hours. This hashtag would continue to see heavy use for the following days.

Twitter co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey, would comment on the timeline changes and trending hashtag, claiming that there was never a plan to introduce an algorithmic timeline in the near future.

Jack’s tweet would not, however, deny the idea that Twitter was planning on introducing a new feed altogether. The idea caused uproar among Twitter users, uproar that can be understood. Twitter’s entire social platform revolves around being the “real-time updates” network. While Facebook may use an algorithmic timeline, the chronological feed was something that separated Twitter from it’s competition.

Dorsey would continue to address the public via a series of Tweets.

“Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. Twitter is about who & what you follow. And Twitter is here to stay! By becoming more Twitter-y. Look at “while you were away” at the top of your [timeline]. Tweets you missed from people you follow. Pull to refresh to go back to real-time. I *love* real-time. We love the live stream. It’s us. And we’re going to continue to refine it to make Twitter feel more, not less, live! Twitter can help make connections in real-time based on dynamic interests and topics, rather than a static social/friend graph. We get it. Thank you all for your passion and trust. We will continue to work to earn it, and we will continue to listen, and talk!”

Jack’s Tweets on the issue would receive over 44,000 retweets and 30,000 likes: a substantial amount of engagement for Twitter’s current CEO. It’s unlikely that “becoming more Twitter-y” will help the network in the future, however. Twitter has been on a downfall since it’s 2013 peak, recently being overtaken by Instagram in search popularity according to Google Trends.

While Google Trends works mainly by analyzing Google search traffic, there is no doubt that the rise of newer social networks such as Instagram and Snapchat have taken a toll on Twitter’s success.

Regardless of whether Twitter keeps or trashes the chronological feed, the network will certainly need to make changes in an attempt to keep up with the evolving landscape of social networks.