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Elon Musk fires a top Twitter engineer over his declining view count

Friday, 10 February 2023

From Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton at the always wonderful Platformer:

Almost two months later, though, view counts have had the opposite effect, emphasizing how little engagement most posts get relative to their audience size. At the same time, Twitter usage in the United States has declined almost 9 percent since Musk’s takeover, according to one recent study.

I don't have data to prove it, but my guess is that whilst usage may have declined by 9%, engagement and interaction has declined by considerably more. Musk's actions have chased off the users who engaged frequently on Twitter. Far from being the Town Square, Twitter is now a broadcast network, being little more than another one-way outlet for brands and journalists to shout into the ether.

Musk, it seems, continues to fail to understand what made Twitter great. It was the people, the conversations, the dialogue. It was finding your tribe. It was finding people with different experiences, in different locations who loved the same things you do. Twitter's users and the content they produce is the product. And his actions have destroyed it.