An Important Question
A zeitgeist diagnostic poll
I have a quick poll question for you guys this week. If you’ve been following some of my recent speculations in various places, you can probably guess where I’m going with this question, but if not, all will be revealed when I analyze the results in a future newsletter. For now, just consider the question seriously, and vote.
Take the question at face value. As in, the actual site would vanish magically in an instant, taking all its data with it. Nobody would have time or warning to save any of it. People would just have to deal with whatever impact that had on their lives.
Feel free to comment below with your thoughts about the relative roles of the two platforms in the social media ecosystem, but if you’ve guessed where I’m going with this, avoid speculating beyond the specific hypothetical.
I’m not active on either one, but I dip into both from time to time, at least enough to have a general feel for them…. LinkedIn is mundane functionality that could easily be recreated/replaced. Twitter, by accident (serendipity?) rather than design, is a unique thing that could not be recreated — its current contortions, on top of its original evolution are an ongoing experiment. No one is waiting anxiously to see what LinkedIn will be like a year from now…
Twitter, at least has some wider value as a social archive. LinkedIn lives in an eternal present of people’s aspirational self-presentation - it has little utility as a historical document - it didn’t have to be that way but that’s how it has turned out