No One Can Kill Twitter — Not Even Elon Musk

Network Effects And Why Twitter Is Too Big To Fail

I originally wanted to post this when I saw this post.

Especially when it was announced that Threads was hemorrhaging users.

But then I learned of Elon Musk’s renewed desire to murder Twitter. He’s named it ‘X’ which is a pretty stupid idea. In fact apparently Elon Musk wanting to rename things ‘X’ got him fired before.

But I don’t think this blog post idea is dead quite yet. Because I recently looked at the LK99 superconductor.

Or alleged superconductor. After writing that I became quite skeptical if LK99 is in fact a superconductor. But there is something I noticed a lot when researching that article. The people talking about things… they weren’t on Threads or Bluesky or Mastodon or whatever. They were on Twitter.

So could Elon Musk succeed in killing Twitter? Yes he could. But just like how a keel of a Sailboat prevents it from capsizing and will even right it again if it does capsize so too does another effect prevent Twitter from capsizing: Network Effects.

Network Effects

Network Effect Lock-In, henceforth referred to as ‘Network Effects’, is a phenomenon where a network becomes more valuable when more users sign up. The classic example is telephone networks. If I’m the only person using it it’s useless. Now if my friend signs up it’s a little useful but then I can only talk to them. If more people sign up the network gets more and more valuable until everyone is signed up.

Now consider another competitor telephone company. Let’s say they have a vastly superior product at a cheaper cost. But they don’t have customers. And without customers their product does not give nearly as much utility as the competition.

And this is the situation we find ourselves in with Twitter and all of its competitors. It is the exact same problem that has plagued many other social networks. The people that sign up are the insiders. But if only the insiders sign up how do you expand the network to more people? If you don’t manage to expand then the insiders will realize that this network is not giving them what they could be getting somewhere else and the social network dies.

Breaking Through The Network Effect

Now there is a way to break through network effects. And it does not involve throwing bags of cash at app developers (ask Microsoft how that worked out for them and Windows phone). In researching this post I believe there are two options.

Option 1: Provide Something You Can’t Get Anywhere Else

Companies that took this route include Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Reddit. Each of these companies offers something that you just can’t get anywhere else. This is the easiest way out of network effects. Simply compete differently.

The one interesting case is TikTok. TikTok does not provide something that different from the competition. There are already ways for users to share video. In fact if another social network did not shut down maybe they would not be here today. That company is Vine, ironically enough, owned by Twitter. Ah, Twitter, you could have been TikTok before TikTok. Opportunity lost.

Now I’m not exactly sure why Vine shut down. Apparently they couldn’t monetize it and the restrictive 6 second videos might have been too restrictive. But it sets the stage for TikTok which focuses on a similar idea but not exactly the same.

Plus TikTok offered a really good product. They added the ability to add music and effects to your videos easily as well as editing tools. And who can forget the recommendation algorithm which I can only describe as ‘legendary’? Tons of marketers have a TikTok account in the hopes of going viral one day. Also apparently the recommendation algorithm is the reason why Medium got popular. Never bet against a good algorithm.

Unfortunately Twitter already has a very good recommendation algorithm. It’s not as automatic but if you search for trending topics, like LK99, you can find really good and interesting content.

So if you want to make a Twitter alternative and be successful it is imperative that you create a platform which gives users something different. And, unfortunately, I don’t see this happening. I guess there’s the fediverse

That’s new. But do you think the average person cares? Of course they don’t. I just don’t see how any of these Twitter clones offer something different compared to Twitter. But there is one more way companies can beat the network effect.

Option 2: Find An Angle

So if you don’t have a product that is that different from the competition you’re not doomed. You can still succeed. But you need to be smart about it. You can’t be all things to all people. At least not at first.

This is the approach Facebook took. Before Facebook there was MySpace. So how did Facebook take over? Well it started in Harvard. Originally Facebook was exclusive to the University. And this exclusivity definitely helped it. Because even if Facebook did not have a strong user base it did have a sense of exclusivity. And so it didn’t really matter. Facebook is the app people use to talk to people at the University, MySpace is what people use to talk to other people.

Of course Facebook slowly expanded to other Universities bringing it’s sense of prestige. And from there it expanded further and further eventually displacing MySpace. I’m not sure if Mark Zuckerburg knew what he was doing or if he just got lucky, but it is definitely the only smart thing he has ever done.

And in a similar vein, other social media platforms only cater to a very exclusive audience. Like LinkedIn. What do you think when I say ‘LinkedIn’? Yeah, it’s the social network for professionals. I’m sure many people maintain a LinkedIn account and a Facebook account. I know I do. And although I don’t use LinkedIn very much it is still a powerful way of communicating with other professionals.

This is, oddly enough, the way Twitter became popular. What did it do at launch? 140 characters. This made it incredibly popular for short bite-sized pieces of news. Then, like Facebook, it relaxed this restriction. To 280 characters. And now you can make entire ‘tweet threads’. It’s quite versatile and it means that Twitter can now be used in place of Facebook. I know that’s how I use it. Not that I’ve ever really used Facebook that much.

And many other sites have adopted similar strategies. When I say DeviantArt what do you think? Artists. When I say Nextdoor what do you think? Neighbourhoods. When I say Goodreads what do you think? Readers. All of these social media platforms cater to an audience. Now some of these are pretty niche. Is there a way that, say, Nextdoor can take over the internet? It’s possible but unlikely. So just finding an audience is not sufficient for taking over the internet. But it can at least prevent backsliding as threads has done.

I do not think Threads has an audience. They just did what every other company did. Let people sign up. That’s how so many other social media platforms died. That’s how Google Plus died. They didn’t do it smartly.

The Third Way

Of course there is another way to kill Twitter. Have Twitter kill itself. That seems to be what Elon Musk is trying to do. But Twitter is very big already and Musk isn’t trying very hard to kill Twitter.

Twitter already has network effects on its side. So whenever Musk tries to topple Twitter the metaphorical network effect keel works to right it again.

And maybe Musk may actually make the network effect stronger. He wants to make an everything app like WeChat in China. I have my doubts if he will succeed. Like, why Twitter? Why not Venmo? But if he does succeed in making an everything app it will boost the network effect yet again.

Would The Real Twitter Competitor Please Stand Up?

So are there any Twitter competitors currently available that will unseat it? No, I don’t think so. Because in order to overcome network effects you need to have a lot of users. And last time I checked Threads was losing users not gaining them.

The first week of launch is the most important time for a social media competitor. Simply because that’s when you get a huge splash of media attention. And, quite frankly, Threads has fumbled the ball.

Now I will say that Mastodon has a chance of becoming an established player. But only with nerds who actually know how to use it and appreciate its decentralized nature. I’ve already seen people mentioning their Mastodon handle. Unfortunately because of the angle Mastodon chose it will never achieve the same broad popularity as Twitter.

The network effect is just too powerful with Twitter. You try to sink the ship — or the whale — and it just bounces right back. It’s almost as if social media platforms have a mind of their own. And in a way they do. They are not the product of one genius brainchild. Or even a team of engineers. They are the consequence of millions, maybe even billions of individual interactions. They are an ecosystem. A living organism. A network.

What did you think? Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts in the comments. I do read them. Eventually.

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