This is the true lifeblood of Twitter.

I think if someone created Twitter for journalists, pundits, wonks, and politicians -ONLY- maybe it would be a place to go? Like something that requires a journalism credential, or a TV host, or an actually office holder title. Sure there'd be crazies, but at least there'd be a source for hot takes.

Twitter could still exist for "citizen journalism", but the two wouldn't mix as heavily.

Interesting idea.

I was thinking about this a bit and I think the real value is Twitter is the random chance that $FAMOUS_PERSON might notice one of your tweets etc (Eg “Elon retweeted my hot take”)

If you take that away does that remove the essence of the site?

What is the benefit of someone famous retweeting a nonfamous person? Bragging rights? Is that value? It seems to me more like a sign that someone needs to work on their internal self-validation mechanisms. Of course, most of the consumers of vapid social media are K=1 thinkers, so maybe that IS the value of twitter and I'm just an out of touch elitist. All are possible.

Twitter isn't just for journos, it's more importantly for all their sources too.

Yeah, they use Twitter instead of booking someone to talk. Much easier to find a few tweets from someone recognizable than to get them in studio. Reporting on tweeting gives the 24 hour cycle something to do that gets attention. A journalist echo chamber would be less effective at this.

He will probably cleave twitter in two - something for journalists and celebrities and then an equivalent of the demonetized youtube space for the people advertisers dont want to associate with.

Instead of banning accounts he will just make them second class citizens.

Facebook? The world wide web? Another website we haven’t seen yet?

I remember when the only social network was MySpace and then it wasn’t.

facebook doesn’t work in the same way

You're forgetting 6-apart.

And Friendster.

This. Most of what I use twitter for is news. Some cyber/IT people and then our news orgs taking screencaps of it for news.