Is it the end of micro-blogging ?
Following the recent craziness in the US, many people are leaving X (formerly Twitter) for new media and platforms like Threads, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
I clearly remember when Twitter was created 19 years ago (2006). My friends and I were developing our applications, enjoying the geek life, and discovering a new tool, platform, or startup almost every day. That was clearly the golden age of the Internet, with so many random, quirky services. The landscape was empty, and the opportunities were amazing.
This is how Twitter was born. In this big mess, Twitter was initially designed to address a specific company’s needs by sending short messages. It ended up as a public service that struck the perfect balance between the very basic RSS feed (which was famous at the time) and the blog post (also very popular then). Twitter was like an enriched RSS feed, but containing only concise messages.
I personally can’t explain how it became so big across all spheres of society, especially in the media, but that’s what happened.
We could have lived with Twitter for many more years, but a series of major events unfolded in the past few months and hours:
- 2022 The acquisition
- 2023 The rebranding
- 2024 The playground
- 2025 The nazi salute
There are several initiatives redirecting traffic from X to alternative platforms.
The most serious alternatives are Mastodon and Bluesky.
Now, what’s next?
Scenario 1: X remains the major platform of trust for news and fact-checking since they still have a huge database of users. Will the mainstream media have the courage to leave this audience?
Scenario 2: Several platforms will coexist, and users will have to maintain multiple accounts and check various sources of information.
Scenario 3: One platform will take the “lead” and slowly replace X.
It’s actually very hard to predict which of these three scenarios will shape the future of micro-blogging.
But there’s another scenario I have in mind:
The End of Micro-Blogging?
There might be another possibility — the end of micro-blogging as we know it.
I don’t think micro-blogging will completely disappear since it’s still a very useful tool for some people. However, with information spread across multiple platforms, the audience might diminish, leading to a decline in editors’ interest in these channels.
In the current context, I also foresee fertile ground for the launch of something entirely new — much like the way Twitter was created 19 years ago. Since there’s no clear “winner” in the micro-blogging game and market, this creates opportunities for new ideas, concepts, and approaches. Someone might take advantage of the “confusion”.
If that happens, I can only hope for the best.
