The Twitter Chronicles

After months of watching Elon Musk troll Twitter for all its “operational problems” and with the ways in which he could run it better, we’re officially living that reality. And it is a true disaster.

Musk retained ownership of the social media platform on October 27, 2022, in an effort to bring about more opportunity for free speech and expression, reduce the number of bots, and to increase its revenue with a better business model.

In the two and a half weeks that he’s been in charge only one of those has happened, and only for a few hilarious at times but disastrous hours. (Yes, we’re talking about the launch of Twitter Blue, here.)

Given the volatility of what a true unregulated free-speech social platform could mean – increase in problematic hate speech, violence and spread of misinformation – advertisers started backing out left and right. Since Musk’s takeover, Twitter has been losing $4M a day putting the company at risk for bankruptcy.

In effort to stagnate a potential collapse, Musk began laying off half of the company’s 7,400 employees. He also launched a new subscription called Twitter Blue where users could pay $8 per month to verify the authenticity of their Twitter account, though it would seem there was no actual verifying of accounts taking place.

Users took the subscription service as an opportunity to troll the Twitterverse by impersonating politicians, brands and other high influence accounts in the few hours before the plug was pulled on the service. The launch of this service may even end up costing Musk millions more in ad revenue given that a tweet from a fake account for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly stating that ‘Insulin was now free,’ resulted in a 4.5% stock drop for the company. Eli Lilly has the kind of ad budget that, if Twitter lost this revenue, would surely bankrupt the already struggling platform.

While some might welcome the collapse of social media, the world’s influential leaders, business owners, researchers and marketers need to consider what this might mean for their futures. Outside of the obvious implications, like the loss of one of the largest platforms for brands and individuals to share their voice, some of the largest research and data platforms are built off the ever-flowing content and discussions that happen on Twitter.

We need to be prepared for the collapse of Twitter. What would it mean for your business, or that of your clients if the platform fails? We are including this very real possibility in consideration of our 2023 plans and beyond, and you should too. But for the time being, grab the popcorn and hold onto your seats; We’re in for a bumpy ride.