About time. Twitter has been absolutely floundering for years under his control, since he has absolutely no idea why anyone is using the site and has just been throwing random ideas copied from others at the wall to see what sticks (nothing, so far), and cryptocurrency garbage nobody wants.
Not to sound like a Boomer, but I still genuinely don't get what Twitter is for. I actually finally created an account a year ago and most of my follows are pretty high-brow (journalists, various industry experts, some big shots in my outer circle) and I still get almost no value from it. They use twitter to post inside jokes or promos to web content that I didn't have trouble finding without twitter. Maybe 1 out of every 1000 tweets will have an unfiltered take that I can't get somewhere else.
Also, the promoted tweets are always way, way off my interests. They look like pigeon droppings on my windshield.
What Twitter used to be good for is following a particular niche of people. For example, if you start following just a handful of developers who post content you like, and follow other developers who they interact with and retweet, the idea was that you'd end up with a feed perfectly curated for your interests, made up only of people who post content that you find interesting.
Unfortunately Twitter doesn't want you to use their service this way, so they inject other (usually divisive) content into your feed in an effort to increase engagement. Because of this, I'm not really sure what Twitter is for anymore. I guess you could make the claim that it's keeping your finger on the pulse of what random people in the world are talking about at any given moment?
Twitter is the absolutely fastest way to get new information. For example the “Omicron” variant surfaced into my Twitter feed last week minutes after the first briefing by South African health authorities, when it was still known only by its numerical designation, before any news service had written it up.
The value of this is that it gives me more time to spend digging deeper into topics that matter to me. I don’t have to keep the TV on in the background all the time to maintain situational awareness. I don’t have to constantly skim basic news articles just to know what is happening.
> most of my follows are pretty high-brow (…) and I still get almost no value from it. They use twitter to post (…) promos to web content that I didn't have trouble finding without twitter.
Have you considered you’re not getting value from it because your follows are high-brow?
Instead of following big shots with their own marketing teams, follow small creators in areas that interest you (e.g. indie game developers).
Evidently the solution is to create a loginwall so that you're forced to create an account rather than being able to access the content without one. That way Twitter can provide "value".
