The fact that it is replacing "better" means of communication in spite of it's objective inferiority maybe says something about what people (i.e. the middle-class Americans who build and use these things) really and truly want in an internet social media platform. Twitter does everything to make self-aggrandizement very, very easy while doing everything to make having an actual in-depth discussion with someone very very difficult.
That is built into the most basic tenets of it's design; Twitter would no longer be Twitter if either of those issues were rectified. That in itself tells me everything I should know about the people who run it and everything I should know about the people that make extensive use of it.
The fact that it is replacing "better" means of communication in spite of it's objective inferiority maybe says something about what people (i.e. the middle-class Americans who build and use these things) really and truly want in an internet social media platform. Twitter does everything to make self-aggrandizement very, very easy while doing everything to make having an actual in-depth discussion with someone very very difficult.
That is built into the most basic tenets of it's design; Twitter would no longer be Twitter if either of those issues were rectified. That in itself tells me everything I should know about the people who run it and everything I should know about the people that make extensive use of it.