Looking back at old Twitter rather reminds me how simplicity was its main selling point. No threads, no images, no long tweets, and so on.
They've since doubled their length and add bunch of meta information on every post, rendering it basically indistinguishable from any other social network.
Twitter today is running on network effects and brand recognition, not core value. That core value is gone.
Do you think Twitter was better when it was simpler? I expect Twitter likely has some data to support their move towards more complicated and longer tweets plus more features.
This reminds me of how I think back on the "good old days" of playing Warcraft Orcs & Humans, but if I were to try and play it now it would be basically unplayable due to missing features and functions that modern RTS games have accustomed me to.
> I expect Twitter likely has some data to support their move towards more complicated and longer tweets plus more features.
With regards to tweet length, they definitely do in the form of average tweet length based on different languages. Cant remember where they posted this data, but they found that in more "compact" languages (i.e. languages where you can put more meaning into fewer characters) almost all tweets were under the max length. For languages like English, though, a much higher percentage of tweets bumped up to the max length and then spilled into the next tweet. They basically then optimized the length so that, even when using less compact languages like English, the majority of ideas people wanted to share could fit in a single tweet.
To me it was, of course everyone is free to see it their own way.
Every social network seems to evolve along the same lines. It starts with a clear concept of what it is, it gets popular based on it, then it starts getting lots of people, and lots of features, becomes a mess, so the timeline gets algorithmic, and suddenly all that's left of the original service is bunch of random noise from random people on your home page/app when you open it, but you keep doing it out of inertia.
Twitter was revolutionary because you DIDN'T have to read someone's long thought on whatever subject. Instead they were forced to keep it short.
You know the saying "I didn't have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one"? It's funny, but it's true. It's very easy to spew garbage. Being succinct takes time.
Back in the day it was better for the geeks. They don't care about all that extra crap as much. But they do care about a simple API they can start hacking with and just drop a status line.
But today it's used by governments, election campaigns and presidents for important PR communication. And by grandma at home. They need those features and don't care about simplicity.
Target groups change as you grow. And that's also why often times original founders and engineers leave because it's not anymore the thing they signed up for. But they get replaced by other people.
I mean originally, it was supposed to be mass SMS. I send a message and anyone who wanted to receive it did so. It was sort of like proto-group SMS messaging.
I agree that threads run counter to the point of Twitter, but I am grateful that they incorporated them. The users started making threads, and it used to be REALLY bad to read through them (being reversed and all). Despite this, everyone still did them, and everyone also always complained they were so hard to read.
If your userbase demands a feature so strongly it makes sense to incorporate it!
This is the lifecycle for every business. You start out niche, exploiting underutilized and untapped markets and features to grow, then when you get big enough you can compete on scale, like those businesses you out-competed.
They've since doubled their length and add bunch of meta information on every post, rendering it basically indistinguishable from any other social network.
Twitter today is running on network effects and brand recognition, not core value. That core value is gone.