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And how many followers do these 20 have? Ever heard of the term "network effect"?

rvz 3y ago
Just like 7 months ago, Twitter's network effect was constantly tested and many alternatives have tried to challenge it, but instead its users will still run back to using Twitter again, especially accounts with lots of followers. This alleged 'exodus' will be no different. Even if Twitter goes down, it's users would rather wait for it to get back up than to 'leave' Twitter for something worse. The same is also true with Instagram. Centralized platforms are much stickier with user retention. Significantly smaller sized or federated networks? Not so much. Which is why you always see an initial spike but retention always drops sharply.
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  You know, I don't want to agree with you but I don't think you're wrong either. I personally saw a couple of more notable Twitter personalities briefly engage with Mastodon back during the November wave, then go back to Twitter only to reappear during the latest drama. The lure of follower counts is strong.
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  "Just like 7 months ago, Twitter's network effect was constantly tested and many alternatives have tried to challenge it, but instead its users will still run back to using Twitter again, especially accounts with lots of followers." Twitter is dramatically less relevant today than it was 7 months ago. Musk can post made-up stats claiming the most engagement ever [1], but across multiple industries the importance of Twitter has completely collapsed. In many cases it isn't being replaced by anything similar. You are absolutely correct that there is a huge amount of stickiness. That's why Elon paid $44B for it. It would take some catastrophic mismanagement to truly kill the site, and Elon seems to be committed to doing that. [1] Which will be intermixed with complaints about the bot problem, DDOS crawling, etc.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    > In many cases it isn't being replaced by anything similar. Which is more or less what you'd expect; that's what normally happens to dying social networks. Most people leaving LiveJournal didn't go to Dreamwidth or similar (ie Livejournal clones); they went to Twitter or Tumblr or other not particularly LiveJournal-like things. I think it's actually fairly plausible now that Threads acts as a drop-in replacement for Twitter, but it's also plausible that it's Twitter's Dreamwidth, and most users go to different sorts of social networks entirely.

rvz 3y ago

Just like 7 months ago, Twitter's network effect was constantly tested and many alternatives have tried to challenge it, but instead its users will still run back to using Twitter again, especially accounts with lots of followers. This alleged 'exodus' will be no different. Even if Twitter goes down, it's users would rather wait for it to get back up than to 'leave' Twitter for something worse. The same is also true with Instagram. Centralized platforms are much stickier with user retention. Significantly smaller sized or federated networks? Not so much. Which is why you always see an initial spike but retention always drops sharply.

BaseballPhysics 3y ago
You know, I don't want to agree with you but I don't think you're wrong either. I personally saw a couple of more notable Twitter personalities briefly engage with Mastodon back during the November wave, then go back to Twitter only to reappear during the latest drama. The lure of follower counts is strong.
llm_nerd 3y ago
"Just like 7 months ago, Twitter's network effect was constantly tested and many alternatives have tried to challenge it, but instead its users will still run back to using Twitter again, especially accounts with lots of followers." Twitter is dramatically less relevant today than it was 7 months ago. Musk can post made-up stats claiming the most engagement ever [1], but across multiple industries the importance of Twitter has completely collapsed. In many cases it isn't being replaced by anything similar. You are absolutely correct that there is a huge amount of stickiness. That's why Elon paid $44B for it. It would take some catastrophic mismanagement to truly kill the site, and Elon seems to be committed to doing that. [1] Which will be intermixed with complaints about the bot problem, DDOS crawling, etc.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > In many cases it isn't being replaced by anything similar. Which is more or less what you'd expect; that's what normally happens to dying social networks. Most people leaving LiveJournal didn't go to Dreamwidth or similar (ie Livejournal clones); they went to Twitter or Tumblr or other not particularly LiveJournal-like things. I think it's actually fairly plausible now that Threads acts as a drop-in replacement for Twitter, but it's also plausible that it's Twitter's Dreamwidth, and most users go to different sorts of social networks entirely.