Twitter is unlikely to be a major part of our business marketing, but many of us have company accounts, and it may be generating a few website visitors – as well as providing an occasionally important way of communicating with specific customers. (Of course, I shouldn’t really even call it ‘Twitter’ any longer, because it’s been renamed as ‘X’ in one of the most effective pieces of branding self-sabotage in history. But who calls it that?)
It may well turn out that Twitter’s owners will successfully create a new, more important business from its base, and for that it seems that Twitter as a brand (and possibly as a service as we know it) has to die.
That seems to be their plan. In the meantime, should we plough on regardless with it?
Certainly there’s no obvious alternative. Mastodon, Threads and Bluesky have all been places where Twitter users could have moved wholesale – but they’ve not done so yet. Anecdotally, there’s a lot less happening on Twitter, and the advertisers seem to have gone – could this type of social media simply fade into obscurity?
At least in business we have a fair idea of whether our involvement is worth the effort. We can look at the engagement data, and make a judgement. If it’s no longer worthwhile, we can put up a ‘gone away for now’ message and just monitor for any messages.