To find out who killed Twitter, look all the way back to the start of the story.
Hi there, This week, I have something extra special to share with you. You can now listen to the latest from Land of the Giants, a podcast from Vox Media that examines the history of the tech companies that have changed the world. This season is all about Twitter, now known as X. Although it's not quite the giant that Amazon and Meta are, the company's outsized influence makes it an especially fascinating case study in Big Tech gone wrong. Read more about episode one below and [click here]( to listen on the platform of your choice. âAdam Clark Estes, senior technology and climate editor Elon Musk didn't kill Twitter Twitter is a disaster. But you know that already. Why is Twitter a disaster? You probably think you know that, too: The usual suspect is Elon Musk, who has spent the year heâs owned Twitter doing his best to drive away users, advertisers, and any remaining sense of fun or utility the service used to have. (Heâs also inexplicably renamed it âX,â which Iâll mention here solely to appease Voxâs excellent copy editors.) But Iâve spent a lot of time thinking about Twitterâs history recently â because Iâm the host of The Twitter Fantasy, Vox Mediaâs newest installment of its [Land of the Giants]( podcast series, which launches today. And I donât think Elon is the right answer for this whodunit. Elon has definitely, demonstrably made Twitter worse. But Iâd argue that Twitterâs present is a direct consequence of its shambolic origin story, where its co-founders and funders couldnât decide what it ought to be. And that when they finally did decide, they set themselves up for eventual disappointment. âSome people would look at it and say, âOh God, this is like short-form emailâ ... âThis is the future of communicationsâ ... âThis is the public square,ââ says Betaworks CEO John Borthwick, who sold multiple startups to Twitter in its early years and had a ringside seat for its early growing pains. âTwitter didnât actually state what they were. And so they could be many things to many different people.â What Twitter and its investors finally did decide is that the company would be the next Facebook: a venture-backed social network fueled by its usersâ content and supported by advertising. And that didnât seem crazy in the late 2000s: The brief history of social networks up until that time was that each one was bigger and more valuable than the last, and Twitter was following Facebook, which was already supposedly worth billions. The problem is that by the time Twitter went public in 2013, it was already clear that it wasnât going to be Facebook. It wasnât going to have anything like Facebookâs ginormous user base, and it didnât have Facebookâs money-printing advertising machine. So if you wanted to invest in a fast-growing, money-making internet company, you invested in Facebook, not Twitter. Which meant Twitterâs stock languished while Facebookâs skyrocketed, and by the time Musk showed up and was willing to overpay for Twitter in 2022, no one had a better idea what to do with the company. And thatâs part of the story we tell in this episode, which you can listen to below. Itâs also not the whole story. And, I should point out, itâs not a story everyone agrees with. Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, for instance, thinks the key moment in Twitterâs history was its failed attempt to buy Instagram, months before Facebook actually did buy the startup for $1 billion. If Twitter had pulled off the deal, Costolo told me, âwe wouldâve won ... [and] that probably wouldâve changed the course of the internet in some important way.â Even still, Twitter managed â often in spite of itself â to be a fundamentally important company, and itâs not going away anytime soon. So this has been a tremendously entertaining podcast series to put together. I hope you like it, and even if you donât Iâd love to hear your feedback. Please listen above or on [your favorite app](, and [drop me a line here](mailto:kafkaonmedia@recode.net) with your questions and commentary. âPeter Kafka, senior correspondent [US Supreme Court Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Elena Kagan attend the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on November 16, 2018.]( Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images [The Supreme Court seems stumped by two cases about free speech online]( [The justices appear to have no idea when they should get involved with online disputes between government officials and their constituents.]( [President Joe Biden, sitting at a desk, hands his pen to Vice President Kamala Harris, standing, while a presentation on AI is projected on a screen next to them.]( Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images [President Bidenâs new plan to regulate AI]( [Now comes the hard part: Congress.]( [A lone Tesla is seen at a large charging station in a mountainous area.]( Sean Gallup/Getty Images [Why Norway â the poster child for electric cars â is having second thoughts]( [Electric cars are crucial, but not enough to solve climate change. We canât let them crowd out car-free transit options.](
Â
[Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Google CEO Sundar Pichai outside of court.]( Drew Angerer/Getty Images [What Googleâs trial means for the company â and your web browsing]( [Which search engine do you use, and why is it Google? A judge will soon decide.]( [An illustration of a pair of eyes, hidden beneath a dark shadow, staring out to the left. Surrounding the eyes are white dots of the same size, against a red background.]( Vox; MirageC/Getty Images [Why some Palestinians believe social media companies are suppressing their posts]( [Shadowbanning and the Israel-Hamas war, explained.]( Support our work Vox Technology is free for all, thanks in part to financial support from our readers. Will you join them by making a gift today? [Give]( [Listen To This] [Listen to This]( [What We All Got Wrong About Twitter]( Twitter's power has always been misunderstood â by its leaders, by its users, and lately, by the world's richest person. [Listen to Apple Podcasts]( [This is cool] [How a Swiss triathlete built a $7 billion shoe company](
Â
[Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Manage yourâ¯[email preferences]( , orâ¯[unsubscribe](param=tech) â¯to stop receiving emails from Vox Media. View our [Privacy Notice]( and our [Terms of Service](. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved.