Twitter Is Fragmenting

Editor’s note: With the release of Threads, we thought that Nathan’s piece from April about the fragmentation of Twitter was particularly prescient, so we’re re-running it today. Are you excited about any Twitter alternatives? Let us know in the comments.

1

Imagine a neighborhood bar. It’s like the one in Cheers, where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.

Now imagine the bar got bought by a rich asshole. He makes crude jokes, and when people don’t laugh he just gets louder. Worse, his lack of organizational skills is starting to take its toll on the basic functioning of service. Everything’s mostly fine—you’re still a regular—but it feels like something that was special about the place died. Meanwhile, the financial math, which was always slightly precarious, is now definitely not working. One wonders how close the place is to Chapter 11.

So what happens? Do people scatter? Do they re-convene at a new location? Or do they stick around?

My belief is that they scatter.

2

What holds a social app together? Ask any tech enthusiast and they will quickly tell you: network effects. Put simply, social apps allow us to communicate with familiar faces in a familiar way, and they make it easy to meet new people. Starting a new social app is kind of like starting a new town—it’s just empty space at first. This is why most social apps fail.