On the four eras of Twitter

There were four eras (so far) of twitter:

1. Twitter is born: this was the early days when it was mostly geeks tweeting about their lunch. Celebrities like Stephen Fry started to use it, but it was just one of many Web 2.0 services available to people.
2. Twitter is good:  This was around the time when Oprah Winfrey spoke to Ashton Kutcher about how great it was. The time when news of the plane landing in the river in NYC was discovered on Twitter before the news. Tweetups happened. Famous people spoke directly with their fans. Journalists piled on to make it a news destination.
3. Twitter is bad: Then activists good and bad discovered twitter. There was Gamergate. There was brigading. The designation “hellsite” got tossed around a lot. The fun bar that was Twitter in the good days became the biker bar with lots of fighting and very little enjoyment.
4. Twitter is dying: This is the “Elon Musk owns it” phase. Maybe this will be the last phase, and “twitter is dying” becomes “twitter is dead”. Let’s check back in a few months, years.

For more on the history of twitter, see this.