I'm fairly sick of hearing about Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. It's been a disaster. But I also can't stop watching.
I feel like he's doing this all on purpose. Just to watch it burn.
I've been a longtime Twitter user. I joined in April 2007. Those early days of Twitter were fantastic (even with the Fail Whale). I think that general timeframe was a great time for tech. Apple's iPhone, Web 2.0, Twitter, etc. There were a lot of great things happening. It was such a time of great promise.
I don't believe Twitter has made many advancements in the last few years. They seemed to have been pretty stagnant. The leadership has appeared to be incompetent. Twitter has always been kind of a dumpster fire, but now it's a dumpster fire on steroids.
The community that uses Twitter had also taken a turn for the worse. Twitter went from a generally positive place to open to a very hostile place. Maybe the Twitter community had always been that way and I was just looking at it through rose-colored glasses.
Twitter probably had too many employees. The way in which they were laid off was horrible. I really do feel bad for anyone who was laid off like that. And then to ask some of the employees to come back? I even feel bad for the folks who still work there. It's just not a good situation for anyone.
My favorite article about this entire episode has been Nilay Patel's "Welcome to hell, Elon". The article is just so good and really highlights the issues Elon will have moving forward with Twitter.
I do wish Elon the best in turning Twitter around.
I have some nostalgic feelings for Twitter of old. I'm just not sure I'm going to use it as much as I once had. But I almost need to see what happens next.