They will leave us in 2023… He is dead Twitter

• 20 Minutes

  gets a little ahead of 2023 and takes out its crystal ball to prepare the obituaries for the coming year.

• Sorry for the spoiler, but all week we're going to tell you who's going to die next year.

• Today, here is Twitter's obituary.

  Rest in peace.

You can judge it unhealthy or bad luck but here is the sad truth: the editorial staff are used to preparing obituaries of personality who are likely to leave us in the months to come.

Stopping at nothing for more transparency,

has decided to reveal some of the obituaries that we have put in the fridge for 2023. Today, we reveal the obituary of Twitter.

For eight weeks, not a day has gone by without a nail being driven in the coffin of the firm with the blue bird.

Since its takeover by the whimsical billionaire Elon Musk, the platform has almost already had both feet (or legs) in the grave.

Between the mass layoffs, the flight of advertisers, the return of suspended accounts and the hiccups in series, we do not give much of the skin of Twitter in the months to come.

However, in twenty years, the microblogging social network has become one of the essential tools for information and communication.

A user behind the hashtag

Go back eighteen years.

The year is 2005. Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Biz Stone are the heads of Odeo, a podcasting start-up.

But faced with the arrival of the new service from Apple, the future of the company darkens.

The three founders then ask their employees to find other ideas to develop.

Jack Dorsey, web designer of the start-up at the time, submits the idea of ​​a communication platform where we would post our messages by SMS.

Initially, the site is called "Twttr", the word "Twitter", which means "twitter", without the vowels.

Messages are limited to 140 characters to match the maximum length of an SMS.

On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey posted the very first tweet in history: "Just setting up my twttr".

just setting up my twttr

— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

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Five months later, on July 13, 2006, the site was officially opened to the general public.

If the first idea was to allow users to share small moments of life with their loved ones, the site is quickly transformed into a platform for commenting on current events, discussing with others around common subjects and following personalities.

In August 2006, when an earthquake shook San Francisco, Twitter took on another dimension.

Users understand that the platform can also be used to disseminate information almost instantaneously.

A year later, it was a user of the social network who whispered the idea of ​​what would become Twitter's trademark: the hashtag - or "hashtag" in French.

On August 23, 2007, Chris Messina offered his community to use it to group conversations on the same subject.

how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups.

As in #barcamp [msg]?

— @chrismessina@mastodon.xyz (@chrismessina) August 23, 2007

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In 2009, Twitter formalized the functionality, each term preceded by the hashtag even becoming a hyperlink to easily find the same theme.

From social network to information channel

From the same year, some events unofficially set up Twitter as a channel for disseminating information.

On January 15, 2009, a plane made an emergency landing on the Hudson River.

A photo of the evacuation of passengers was posted on Twitter a few minutes after the tragedy by a user on a nearby ferry.

Result, the photo circulates on the platform long before appearing on the traditional media.

RT @jkrums There's a plane in the Hudson.

I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people.

Crazy.

pic.twitter.com/nutgFnqgZv

— NYCAviation (@NYCAviation) January 15, 2015

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In June 2009, to contest the result of the presidential election in Iran, demonstrators use Twitter to coordinate and create "the Green Movement", also nicknamed "Twitter Revolution", because of the primordial importance of the social network in the world. organization of events.

In 2012, the tool will again be used massively by protesters during the Arab Spring.

On November 7, 2013, the social network opened a new chapter in its development by joining the closed circle of listed companies.

If, in the first days, its value skyrockets, the following months, the balance sheet is much less radiant.

The number of monthly users is increasing very slowly, causing dissatisfaction among shareholders and more generally the markets.

Financially, Twitter is sinking.

The losses amount to more than 500 million dollars.

Worse still, in August 2015, the stock price fell back below its original price.

The rumor of the sale of the network begins to circulate.

Twitter will take three years to recover.

It was not until February 2018 that the social network announced its first quarterly net profit.

Even if the number of users does not increase, the price of shares, it flies away.

The same year, the platform generalized the practice of the "thread", a thread of messages that allows you to develop a longer statement.

She also decided to increase the size of posts, increasing the limit from 140 to 280 characters.

Presidents, political parties, associations, NGOs, collectives… In a few years, Twitter has become an indispensable tool, even revolutionizing the strategy of political communication.

Like Donald Trump who tweeted more than 26,000 times during his term, transforming the social network into a platform for political announcements.

But wanting to play too much with Twitter, the former president burned his wings.

On January 8, 2021, two days after his supporters took over the Capitol and interrupted the counting of votes for the presidential election, Twitter made the decision to permanently ban Donald Trump's account.

.@realDonaldTrump has been permanently suspended by Twitter, according to .@CNN.

pic.twitter.com/ihrIqunY7F

— Big Al (@nivnos33) January 8, 2021

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Descent into hell

If you have to date the beginning of the real descent into hell of Twitter, it was a few months ago.

We are October 27, 2022 and Elon Musk has just offered the social network for 44 billion dollars.

A week after his takeover, the billionaire is cleaning up the workforce and laying off half of the employees, or nearly 3,500 people, including almost all of the moderation teams.

A few days later, he dissolved the social network's trust and security council, which brought together independent researchers and human rights activists.

The consequences are almost immediate: since the arrival of Elon Musk, hateful and discriminatory content (racist, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, etc.) has not ceased to increase.

Advocating total freedom of expression, the boss of Tesla also decides to restore accounts banned by former Twitter teams, including that of Donald Trump.

But this freedom, Elon Musk does not grant it to everyone.

He does not hesitate to suspend several accounts of journalists who write about him, as well as an automated account which follows his private jet.

To bail out the coffers of the social network, which has never been profitable, Elon Musk is launching a paid certification.

But this new feature gives rise to many identity thefts and the dissemination of false information.

Temporarily suspended, the scheme was relaunched a few weeks later.

Too late, the damage is done.

With his decisions, Elon Musk is losing the confidence of some of the advertisers who are withdrawing.

A dramatic situation when you know that the platform derives nearly 90% of its revenue from advertising.

"The financial collapse is the biggest risk of the moment for Twitter", had confided Emmanuelle Patry, founder of Social Media Lab, to

.

To make matters worse, Elon Musk has decided to play the future of the platform with polls.

After the one on the reinstatement of suspended accounts, including Donald Trump's account, he asked users whether he should leave the head of the group.

And 57% of them said they wanted him gone.

I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!

After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022

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Already in November, Virginie Clève, digital strategy consultant interviewed by

, was not very optimistic about the longevity of the blue bird firm: "Is the fact that Elon Musk runs Twitter, that sign his death warrant?

It's possible.

On December 20, the billionaire confirmed his retirement from Twitter once he finds "someone crazy enough" to succeed him.

It remains to be seen whether this new CEO will be able to resuscitate the firm with the blue bird.

Or if he'll let it fly away to the angels.

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