A Tale of Two Twitters
We must fix Twitter twice. First, to place the community back on an even keel after capsizing in the Musk tidal wave. And second, to prepare for the next generation of social media. Let’s start in reverse order:
Social media, micro-blogging and message boards are all broken. They have been for a while. To a great extent we suffer from an irreducible time-constraint “uncertainty principle”. If we spend the entire day on discovery, chatting with our peers, handing out stars and reposting, we only have time for the most shallow and fleeting of interactions. If we devote our energy to thought, research, and action, we have no time to participate in on-line community building. Or to let the serendipity of discovery work its magic.
Too much to read, too little to say, and never enough time. FOMO.
AI is likely the next wave. Our agent will comb through multiple social media repositories of our choosing and return with just the “right” blend of community insights and serendipity. Curate the news. Respond to every post. Amuse us. Answer technical questions instead of aimlessly searching through dated message boards.
In return, the AI will seek our opinion on various topics- feeding our contributions, and our personality, back into the mix.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Instead of 3 hours on twitter or reddit, much of it wasted and repetitive, you might devote 15 minutes. And, free up time to socialize with a small circle of online friends, even (yikes!) IRL.
As to twitter present, Musk will soon tire of this job. Or be forced to attend to his other businesses. Or just be distracted by the next shiny object.
Musk, who gives lip service to democratic polling, should evolve ownership back to the employees AND users. Charge $25 a year to participate, and receive stock in exchange (you’d also be free to accept targeted advertising in lieu of an annual membership fee, but no stock. The fee would also cut down, somewhat, on bots).
Renegotiate the debt. Use the fee and advertising dollars to operate the company and buy out Musk’s shares over time. Run twitter like a real enterprise with a serious CEO and board, and allow stock to trade on a digital ledger (every thing is better with crypto).
With skin in the game, owner/members are incentivized to make twitter succesful. And to remain with the platform. Who knows, they may choose to federate with the mastodons of the world. Or decide what level of misinformation is tolerable to their community. Or lead by adopting an AI curator.
Time to put the social back into a social network!
