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Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?

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Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?

#1

Post by kgraves »

I thought with Elon's reckless actions that X should have been dead by now.

During the time that X was acquired by Elon:

Pebble / T2 (X competitor) shut down. (1)

Artifact (Another X competitor) shut down. (2)

Post.news is drastically losing traction with it's founder struggling to "kill X". (3)

Threads is faltering and lost over 75% of their daily active users since launch. (4) (5)

Spill is in invite limbo and many people lost interest.

Substack's competitor Notes didn't take off and people are moving away from the platform. (6)

Mastodon is still very hostile to non-tech folks, made no dent to X in user traction and still has major UX & discovery issues. (7)

Hive was a flash in the pan, turned off their servers and fell off with no roadmap. (8)

BlueSky is still stuck in invite limbo with no traction.

Clubhouse and Nostr aren't even on the map here.

All the while X is doing all the worst things possible to destroy their own platform, yet it is still up and running somehow and the X competitors imploded in the process.

If any other platform did what Elon has done they would have been dead a long time ago.

Why is Twitter / X not dead after all these months even when it is valued much less than what Elon purchased it for?

(1) https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/24/pebble-the-twitter-alternative-previously-known-as-t2-is-closing-down/

(2) https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/12/instagram-co-founders-news-aggregation-startup-artifact-to-shut-down/

(3) https://themessenger.com/tech/why-is-it-so-damn-hard-to-kill-twitter

(4) https://fortune.com/2023/08/04/threads-traffic-spiral-down-82-percent-launch-month-mark-zuckerberg/

(5) https://www.businessinsider.com/threads-meta-app-decrease-daily-active-users-mark-zuckerberg-2023/

(6) https://www.platformer.news/why-platformer-is-leaving-substack/

(7) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/18/mastodon-users-twitter-elon-musk-social-media

(8) https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/hive-social-turns-off-servers-after-researchers-warn-hackers-can-access-all-data/

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?

#4

Post by tentacleuno »

> All the while X is doing all the worst things possible to destroy their own platform, yet it is still up and running somehow and the X competitors imploded in the process.

The spam on Twitter is nigh on unbearable -- I find myself the subject of a constant barrage of crypto mention farming spam, and paid-for ads with women in very suggestive poses.

It almost seems like Elon has turned the spam filter off completely -- I repeatedly see accounts with 300+ posts, each mentioning 15 people with crypto messaging (all in the space of an hour). There is absolutely no way such behaviour wouldn't flag anti-spam on any other fucking platform.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?

#5

Post by bediger4000 »

I figured Twitter would die about last April, after firing/throwing away/laying off so much staff. I'm as much in the dark as you are.

I did return to Twitter this last fall, so as to be able to look at Tweets that The Grugq has in his daily newsletter, after about a years' absence. I found the amount of advertising, scammy advertising, literal boner juice ads, overwhelming. Despite his ranting and raving, Elon hasn't solved the bot problem, it appears there's more bots than ever.

I think that right now Twitter exists to squeeze the last little bit of value from advertisers.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?

#7

Post by hax0ron3 »

From my perspective, Twitter is better than it used to be - it now seems more dynamic with more of a "Wild West" feel than it used to have, and it seems to have more diversity of political opinions than it used to have. On the other hand, I've heard that some advertisers have pulled out and I don't know how Twitter has weathered that storm.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?

#9

Post by sidibe »

The others probably shut down because the business looked doomed and unsustainable. Elon can afford to keep it running for just pride for a while with massive losses which they are probably incurring from their debt and advertising drop

Re: Ask HN: Why isn't Twitter / X dead yet?

#10

Post by acdha »

There’s a lot of inertia to a social network and Twitter had high mindshare in some key groups: journalists, celebrities, politicians, authors, academics, musicians, government agencies, etc. A lot of people use Twitter _less_ than they used to but still come back, especially for things like local news or a major event like the wars in Ukraine or Israel.

I do think the criticism of Mastodon is wrong, related to the previous point. It’s not that it’s hostile to non-tech folks but that it has the usual problems of a decentralized system: if you join, you will likely have problems finding people to follow. That’s no longer as hard as it used to be but I think that’s the strongest thing pulling people back to Twitter. It also seems to be softening as more people join Mastodon / Threads, and some organizations are putting out official servers because X has reminded them of the benefits of controlling their own presence where they can be absolutely certain their posts will not be displayed with literal Nazi ads.

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