Twitter has gotten old, in most senses of that word, and even its new owner Elon Musk can’t invent a way to turn back the clock.
Founder Jack Dorsey sent his first tweet — “just setting up my twttr” — in March 2006. Since then, the noisy, baffling, reviled, addictive, occasionally government-destabilizing social media service hasn’t really changed all that much. Type a (very) short thought and send it to the world, and people will talk back. A revolutionary concept at the time.
Sixteen years into the experiment, Twitter is a graybeard by internet years and by corporate standards. TikTok is currently the world’s fastest-growing platform. Twitter’s idealistic and oft-criticized founders, including Dorsey, have long exited the premises. The board of directors who replaced them were so eager to offload Twitter at an attractive price that they sued erratic billionaire and super-poster Musk to stop him from backing out of a promise to buy it.
