Twitter’s latest product release is called Moments. On one hand it is a feature designed to reengage its user base. On the other it can be seen as an attempt to answer some major criticism coming from industry thought leaders and Twitter’s own investors.
The timing of its release, a few days after the formal announcement of Jack Dorsey as permanent CEO and a few days ahead of a big round of layoffs, suggests it is more the latter, a feature released to manage the Twitter story in the market.
If Twitter wasn’t so big this would seem like just any other product release. But it is big. And it’s worth considering what Moments means.
Ben Thompson provided a thorough and thoughtful analysis via his blog at Stratechery.
“Twitter just reinvented the newspaper. It’s not just any newspaper though — it has the potential to be the best newspaper in the world. … Twitter Moments is built for basic users. It’s essential, though, that Twitter not forget about those living mostly happily with the company’s core product — they’re the ones that create Moments’ content (for free, I’d add). This is where Dorsey’s return as CEO has the potential to have the most impact, because the core product has stagnated horribly, particularly in regards to the 140-character limit and conversations.”
While many believe all this is a very positive step forward for Twitter, it seems to be a distraction from much bigger problems that Twitter and all the other platforms should be working on.
I’ve always felt Twitter was mostly a force for good. I like Twitter. It’s useful. I feel the same way about Google. These are companies with good products that clearly value a healthy, open society underpinned by free speech.
There are people working at places like Facebook, Apple, Yahoo! etc who also share the same values. Unfortunately, their companies’ business models aren’t predicated on a broader social good in the world, such as free speech. They make decisions based on how to increase the value of the stock.
At the end of the day Twitter and Google are no different. All these companies are subject to the whims of shareholder value. When the stock declines they have to find ways to commercialise whatever assets they can control, regardless of the impact those changes have on their desire to support things like free speech in the world.
As users of these products we become complicit in their extravagance when the real need is for them to focus on where information comes from and the impact it has on society.
Is it even possible for journalists to protect their sources any more? How can we uncover corruption and challenge authority if people aren’t willing to talk? What is truth on the internet when agendas share shelf space with independent media? How much journalism is needed to ensure a healthy open society and where does the money come from to support it?
I’d love to see the clever people at Twitter work on products that solve those kinds of problems and, as a result, create a lot more value for the company and its shareholders in a global way over a much longer period of time.
There are plenty of ways to funnel news and information. And we should always push technology forward to improve them. Twitter Moments might be brilliant. But we mustn’t focus so much on how we’re consuming information that we forget about the challenges to upstream media and what is going to be fed into those funnels.
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