Reports of X's demise have been greatly exaggerated
The Harvard plagiarism scandal is evidence of the platform's enduring power
The website 'House Price Crash' is a community of thousands of people who have been praying for a UK house price collapse for nearly two decades. Day after day, the forum reassures itself that the inevitable implosion is coming, and that they were right all along, when they opted not to get on the ladder in 2005. It's a community sustained by confirmation bias, denial of basic economics, and despair. Much like the media industry commentary about X.
Many journalists, influencers and comms people have been predicting Twitter's imminent collapse and declaring its irrelevance since the earliest days of the Musk takeover. Some have even walked away to the social media equivalent of House Price Crash - Threads - to swap stories of X's mismanagement.
And some of the criticism is justified. By some metrics, the Twitter community has shrunk since the takeover, and the new brand has much less media visibility than the old. Elon Musk himself has admitted that the platform could go bust if advertisers don't return. But Twitter's network effect helped it survive the departure of right wingers to Parler and Gab and so too it will survive the departure of progressives to Threads and Blue Sky.
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In the meantime, as the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay highlights, it remains the only open platform where opinion elites co-ordinate at scale.
TikTok and Facebook may be the platforms to engage mass audiences, YouTube, podcasts and Substack are the places where ideas and arguments are explored in-depth, and LinkedIn and Instagram are where we go to admire and be admired, but it is only Twitter that can energise debates, give shape and form to elite opinion, and mobilise elite action.
That's why Musk bought it, that's why so many were concerned when he did, and it's why it's wrong for anyone in the communications industry to write it off.
Charity campaigner and public affairs professional
10 个月Agree - great short read. Given you wrote this on LinkedIn do you want more admiration still? ;-)
Founder and Creative Director at The Sunny Side | Author of "The Creative Human" (Worldwide No. 10 Bestseller) and "Cultural Engineering" (Worldwide No. 11 Bestseller)
11 个月I was thinking of exactly this and how the Congressional Hearings on Antisemitism showed the power of X. The testimony of Liz Magill in particular stood out for her smirk, founded on the assumption that "no one is going to watch this congressional hearing other than this random chick asking me some pesky questions" which would have been true in the days of Old Twitter. I was also thinking of how the bombing of the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza was prematurely declared an Israeli war crime by corporate media but ordinary X users showed with geolocation and audio recordings that it was a misfired Hamas rocket, and after several long days, the entire corporate media came to the same conclusion.
Bang on Nick. It’s incredible that so many in the comms industry who claim to be ‘data-led’ on one hand, instantly abandon all metrics and reason when there is a band wagon to jump on that’s heading in their own favourite political direction. Equally importantly, the X community coverage and commentary of live football (other sports are also available) is un-matched.
Storyteller and Senior PR / Communications Professional Specialising in Technology. Open to permanent and interim roles.
11 个月Totally agree with your assessment Nick. Although interestingly, the FT predicts X will file for bankruptcy in 2024. All part of Musk’s clandestine plan, supposedly!