Does Twitter-the-format add something to the world that must be replicated?
I’m not suggesting Twitter has no value, but I question whether it or something very much like it is the only place that value can be realized.
What does Twitter do so we’ll that we can’t imagine doing without it?
I was able to discover about multiple topics I got interested in, got to read about a lot more technical stuff that otherwise I wouldn't ever heard of it but it's interesting (and even useful to my job!).
And I also found 2 jobs through twitter, that's two more jobs than through linkedin!
It is assumed to be the best place to hang out on the internet. This assumption holds so much water that a multi billionaire paid $44B for it.
There's also a lot to be said about shaming public officials/organizations (courtesy of the trending feature) into action.
It's a place that media whores love, and they're the ones who make all of the content. That's why we're hearing about it endlessly. One of the biggest media whores bought it, so it should really be considered an internal war that we're just bystanders to.
> I’m not suggesting Twitter has no value, but I question whether it or something very much like it is the only place that value can be realized.
I'm pretty sure that what we wanted was to be able to send public text messages that people could subscribe to, and to be able to subscribe to other people doing the same thing. Putting the right UI over group chats, and making every registered user a mod of a group chat that shares their account name would be Twitter-- i.e. an ideal replacement.
You're an articulate, capable being, maybe focusing your energy and time on becoming better and helping others around you become better would be more rewarding to you and the world.