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Twitter has received a lot of attention recently, albeit for the wrong reasons. Its stock has slowed, and the platform has largely remained unchanged since its inception in 2006. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, made an offer to buy Twitter and take the public company private on April 14, 2022. Musk stated in an SEC filing, “I invested in Twitter because I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the world, and I believe free speech is a socioeconomic imperative for a functioning democracy.” As a social media platform researcher, I believe Musk’s potential ownership of Twitter, as well as his stated reasons for purchasing the company, raise significant concerns. These issues stem from the nature of social media platforms and what makes them unique.
What distinguishes Twitter
Twitter fills a distinct market niche. Because of its short text chunks and threading, it fosters real-time conversations among thousands of people, making it popular with celebrities, media personalities, and politicians alike.
The half-life of content on a platform is discussed by social media analysts as the time it takes for a piece of information to reach 50% of its total lifetime engagement, which is typically measured in page views or popularity-based metrics. A tweet has a half-life of about 20 minutes, compared to five hours for Facebook posts, twenty hours for Instagram posts, 24 hours for LinkedIn posts, and 20 days for YouTube videos. The much shorter half-life demonstrates Twitter’s central role in driving actual conversations as events unfold.
Tweets in a conversation are displayed in chronological order, and while much of a tweet’s involvement is frontloaded, the Twitter archive provides instant and accomplished access to every public Tweet. This establishes Twitter as a historical record keeper and de facto fact-checker.
