Whither Twitter(?)

Some whales never make it back to the ocean: “The Whale Beached between Scheveningen and Katwijk, with Elegant Sightseers,” by the Dutch painter Esaias van de Velde.  (Via The Atlantic and Wikimedia)

A couple of terrific posts about Twitter from the last couple of weeks.

Why Twitter’s dying (and what you can learn from it), by Umairh Haque:

Abuse is killing the social web[.]

The decay of Twitter, by Robinson Meyer:

[O]n Twitter, people say things that they think of as ephemeral and chatty. Their utterances are then treated as unequivocal political statements by people outside the conversation. Because there’s a kind of sensationalistic value in interpreting someone’s chattiness in partisan terms, tweets “are taken up as magnum opi to be leapt upon and eviscerated, not only by ideological opponents or threatened employers but by in-network peers.”

I have certainly felt a lot less love for Twitter over the last 18 months or so. Taking 4-6 weeks out in 2012 or 2013 would never have been something I’d contemplate; now I consider doing it nearly every time I sign in. By using lists far more and reducing who I follow I am trying to protect what Twitter once was, but I don’t think it will be too long until I use it only sparingly.

Twitter might not be dead, but it’s definitely zombie-like.

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