> but because network effects businesses are hard to kill
That is true, but once it does go down it can go very fast, especially if there is a viable replacement. Digg, Slashdot, MySpace, AOL, Google+ etc. Network effects work to your advantage on the way up, but can work to your disadvantage on the way down.
Tumblr and Flickr are shadows of their former selves.
Oh, for sure. It'll be interesting, though, to see if there is a "next Twitter". I suspect that Twitter is a creature of the era in which it started, and so that there is no next Twitter in the sense of a global town square. I think it will be more like email's slow slide, with different needs causing fragmentation into different tools and spaces.
Re:Twitter Suspends PG's Account
by nickthegreek on Sunday December 18, 2022 @10:19PM
(#34047983)
While also paying the bills? Sure he could do it with unlimited capital, but I don’t see that as being the case. He has debt to pay.
I think there is. Not so much because of Musk himself, but because network effects businesses are hard to kill. Exhibit A being Jack's years of vague, indifferent, part-time management.
I think he could continue to fuck it up for a while, find a reason to declare victory, and turn it over to a department-store mannequin to run while he goes back to his real job(s). It would slowly reconstitute itself and keep chugging along. As comparison, I note that Tumblr and Flickr are still going concerns.
That said, he's been far more diligent in breaking it than I ever expected, so he may well manage to destroy it.