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Twitter is just not that into you

I've been among those most bitterly disappointed by the failure of Twitter. I have now come to realize that the failure is inevitable, in that it has become clear that if Twitter is going to succeed, they are going to do so by becoming something that alienates all of the current users in the chimeric pursuit of some other, larger user community.

I was not an immediate user of Twitter, but when I started using it, I thought it was almost perfect. It was not without problems, but it was simple and clean. Since then, it has introduced a whole series of "enhancements" that have made the experience less and less satisfactory from my perspective: image previews, quote-tweets, increasingly intrusive advertising, and "moments" all come to mind. I wondered why they kept doing that and then I saw Douglas Rushkoff explain it very simply.

When Twitter accepted the mountain of venture capital, they tied themselves to an obligation to make lots of money. It's not enough to become successful — they have to become much much bigger to meet expectations. The fact that they have a great system that's useful to the existing userbase, no matter how passionate and committed, will never allow them to meet those expectations. We aren't the users they're looking for.

With that understanding, suddenly their actions become comprehensible. But, from my point of view, very sad. Twitter has set themselves on a path where I lose no matter what.

I've heard that, in spite of users' pleas, next week Twitter intends to implement a non-chronological feed. They've also been warning they intend to switch away from the 140 character limit. With these changes, I will probably quit using Twitter. RIP Twitter.