COMNEWS 2023

What Is Lost When Twitter Is Lost? Reflections on the Impending Death of a Platform

Axel Bruns

• 25 Oct. 2023 – Keynote presented at the COMNEWS 2023 conference, Bali
• 23 Nov. 2023 – Keynote presented at the ANZCA 2023 conference, Wellington

Presentation Slides

Abstract

Twitter, at least in the shape of the platform that we have come to know over the past 15 years or more, is gone – permanently, or so it seems: even the name Twitter itself is being eroded, if slowly and with difficulty, in favour of a new brand name, ‘X’. This is not the first time a once popular social media platform has declined and disappeared, of course, nor will it be the last: Internet history is littered with the remains of platforms from GeoCities through Friendster to MySpace.

But what stands out about Twitter’s death, if and when it comes, is its rapidity, its avoidability, and its roots in the platform’s past and current owners’ recklessness – in short, Twitter’s death will be not from natural causes but as the result of external forces. Importantly, this also means that those individuals and organisations who had relied on Twitter as a platform for their day-to-day personal, social, and professional activities were caught less prepared for the eventuality than they otherwise might have been.

This keynote explores why this matters, and what consequences it produces. It looks back to what functions Twitter, in its heyday, performed in global public communication processes, and forward to whether and how these functions can and will be performed by other existing or emerging components of an increasingly fragmented global social media landscape.