[rp1]

You’re ignoring the competitive landscape. You might pay for Google, but a lot of people would choose to use a free alternative if they needed to pay. The loss in users would give Google less data and make Google less effective as a search engine.

[TheTrotters]

You’re absolutely right about Google but, I think, it’s not necessarily true for Twitter. Their social graph is so important that it wouldn’t make sense for any one person to go to a free Twitter clone.

And everybody moving at roughly the same time is probably an insurmountable coordination problem.

[BeFlatXIII]

> it wouldn’t make sense for any one person to go to a free Twitter clone

True, but they may leave microblogging behind altogether rather than pay. Twitter just isn't that valuable. Then again, I deleted my accounts four or five years ago.

[syshum]

>>everybody moving at roughly the same time is probably an insurmountable coordination problem.

If this were true we would not have a long long list of defunct once popular platforms where people used to be, but moved away from in mass after poor decisions by the platform operators.

To believe twitter is immune to the digg, myspace, etc effect is hubris not backed by reality

[raydev]

Myspace was for young online people. I was on Myspace. It was tough to even convince half of my friends during that time that being online was fun, let alone being on a social network that didn't really facilitate communication.

Digg was for nerds and nerd-adjacent people. Not sure why you'd even mention it in the same breath as Twitter.

Twitter's scale is so massive, the social graph so varied, that a true replacement is probably years away. It's not impossible for a competitor to take over, of course. Just unlikely.

[TheTrotters]

That’s of course a fair point.

But there are key differences. Twitter is used as a key communication channel for politicians, public officials, business executives, journalists, academics etc. all over the world. People’s careers and influence are built partly on their follower count and who those followers are. Key users post under their real name.

Digg and MySpace were very different from that.

[syshum]

>>twitter is used as a key communication channel for politicians, public officials, business executives, journalists, academics etc. all over the world

I think this is over stated, Twitter is used to amplify, or bring attention to some announcment, event, or other communication but twitter itself is not the communication channel, it simply links to the communication channel which is often another platform (youtube as an example) or a website, or some other communication type.

Twitter is advertising, be it paid ads, or the "politicians, public officials, business executives, journalists, academics " advertising their own work directing people off twitter to consume more of that work

Personally I have found very little value and very little substantive communications coming out of twitter, in fact the only time I even visit twitter it is look at meme accounts not to find actual information or news

[jpindar]

>the only time I even visit twitter it is look at meme accounts

Funny how the people who don't use something always know all about it. (Science Twitter is not meme Twitter.)

[syshum]

>>Science Twitter

Well if science is being conducted over twitter that goes along way to explain the terrible state of modern science...

[JumpCrisscross]

> social graph is so important that it wouldn’t make sense for any one person to go to a free Twitter clone

Twitter doesn't have as connected a graph as e.g. Facebook. This lets a few hyperconnected users credibly threaten defection.