Twitter is a weird island. It’s ready to open up to the world.
Twitter shouldn’t be a platform at all, the software developer Blaine Cook argued 15 years ago. He envisioned the app as a backbone for online chatter, one that would allow its users to freely exchange messages with other platform users instead of having conversations exclusively on Twitter.
Twitter remained a tightly controlled island on the internet growing at an acceptable rate due to the use by politicians, media, and corporate communications. But it has stagnated for the last few years and hasn’t found a successful way to monetize.
In February of last year, Twitter reached its highest stock price with a market capitalization of $60 billion, it plummeted to half of that currently. Getting new people interested in using the app is difficult with such a limited platform and this lack of growth causes a lack of new investment.
To fight against that negative trend, the company is pursuing a Web 3.0-style decentralization, by taking these actions:
- Open protocol for social media: Looking for ways to help users to interact easily with other social media platforms.
- Weaving cryptocurrency into its app: Allowing users to pay each other with Bitcoin and use NFTs.
- Opening up to developers: Letting users build custom features with open-source software.
Twitter executives now believe that decentralizing the social media service will radically shift online power, moving it into the hands of users, and pose a fundamental challenge to companies like Facebook, but it could take years to happen.
“If you decentralize your platform and you give developers more powers to make richer experiences and better, safer timelines, then everybody benefits from this” -Amir Shevat.
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