5 thoughts I had while Twitter was down
Only a day after Blue Monday, another huge challenge to overcome. Twitter has experienced perhaps the worst outage in its history. So unable to tweet or scroll through my timeline, I started thinking.
Thought #1: There’s not much I can do without Twitter, is there?
The first thing I do every morning when I come to work, is to check my Tweetdeck dashboard, respond to overnight mentions of our brand, retweet content, schedule new tweets, connect. This morning, my Tweetdeck was mysteriously silent. And so was my phone.
For most community managers out there, Twitter is an important platform to you know, manage their communities. And without it, there’s only so much you can do. FOMO kicks in and you start missing even the occasional trolls that seek your attention in 140 characters.
refreshes page, Twitter still not up.
Thought #2: What if Twitter stays down forever?
In days like these, you start picturing your life without Twitter. As if it never existed. Today, I mysteriously came across a bunch of articles (maybe because I had all these extra time to read?) featuring Snapchat as the new hot social platform for 2016 and the thing you should be focusing on this year.
The truth is that social media evolves and new platforms emerge all the time. I mean, a few years ago, MySpace was cool. And we have to go along with it. Connect with our audience on other media, find them where they are.
Note to self while I refresh Twitter: Experiment more with Snapchat.
Thought #3: Well, at least no one mentions the 10K limit
Perhaps being hesitant before a big change is human nature. And the Twitterverse only knows how much this (potential) change is resisted.
The truth is, I am one of these people. I cannot imagine a Twitter with a 10K-characters tweet limit. The 140 characters is what made Twitter what it is today. Would longer tweets mean a shift towards a publishing platform? But honestly, don’t we have enough of those already? I guess, we’ll just have to wait and see. If Twitter ever comes back!
Refreshes page, still getting this devilish robot.
Thought #4: Wonder if Periscope will still be a thing without Twitter
I love Periscope. Although you could say I’m more of a lurker. But I feel that it has huge potential for brands and individuals as we’ve only begun to taste its disruptive power. But Periscope at the moment goes hand in hand with Twitter. Which makes you wonder if it’ll be as successful as a stand alone platform.
One of the reasons it has overshadowed its main competitor Meerkat is probably Twitter, and with the latest plans of watching live streams straight from your timeline, the connection between the two is even stronger.
Would Periscope be the one to save Twitter and how? Or is it the other way around?
Let me check if Twitter is back up. Still nothing.
Thought #5: Does anyone else give a f*ck?
While Twitter has struggled with getting new active users onboard, it still remains important. I mean, #TwitterDown was trending, on Twitter, while Twitter was down.
Twitter enables interacting and connecting with other users in a way that no other social media platform has managed to offer so far, openly, publicly and as widespread or as intimate as you want.
And while it’s not the fastest growing social media player at the moment, it has a large number of dedicated, active users that use Twitter to connect, to engage, to break and follow news as they happen, because Twitter is still relevant.
Refreshes page. Twitter is finally back up! Missed you my old friend.
