A world without Twitter? I don’t think so
Juan Fernández, a journalist at Spanish daily El Periódico, called me to talk about a journalistic hypothesis that I wanted to clarify: what would happen if, following the cataclysm generated by Elon Musk on Twitter, the platform disappeared. His Spanish-language story can be found here (pdf).
There’s been plenty of speculation in the media regarding Twitter’s demise, which I would say is misguided: what Elon Musk is doing is taking highly disruptive measures to end a very inefficient corporate culture; but he has no interest in Twitter disappearing.
Elon Musk, as somebody who uses Twitter a lot, sees enormous value in the platform, and that he believes can be maximized much more, and the short-term effects, even if they might include crashes or service interruptions, are of little concern to him. What he wants is to change the company from top to bottom, create a powerful and disciplined team that reflects his work philosophy, and provide the new Twitter with a set of features that make it a value proposition worth paying for.
That said, speculating on Twitter’s possible demise is a useful exercise, because it allows us to understand the value of the platform: beyond being an important forum for conversation with global reach and almost instantaneous impact, the platform generates a medium with a fundamental value for…
