Opinion: there is no good alternative to Twitter

November 21, 2022
John Koetsier
news

There, I said it 🙂

Everyone has their babies and their favorites. Everyone wants some upstart new movement, company, organization, or app to be the new Twitter. But in my very humble opinion, it just doesn’t exist right now.

New post on Forbes:

If you dislike the new owner, stay there and present different opinions. If you dislike his re-enabling of former U.S. president Donald Trump’s account, stay there and compete in the marketplace of ideas.

I fully stand to be proved wrong, but in my opinion there is no viable alternative to Twitter as a relatively global marketplace of ideas where you can follow just about any thought leader, political leader, celebrity, sports star, or random person off the stream, and participate in a broad global conversation. It’s imperfect, it comes with challenges and dangers, it’s messy at times. And I really dislike the way Musk has come in like a bull in a china shop, firing thousands of people without so much as an all-hands chat and a thank-you-for-your-service-but-we’re-making-big-changes-quickly.

That all said: at minimum, Twitter is interesting, the pace of innovation has quickened and should stay fast (if Musk hasn’t fired too many of the people who keep the service running), and anyone can still play.

The real-time news and debate site that is Twitter still stands as the best in its class.

Check out the whole story here, in which I go through all (I think all!) of the alternatives and opine endlessly on why I think they are lacking.

Disagree? Tell me why: