Twitter is Doomed, pt. 246

. . . and the reasons won't fit in a tweet. About those DISASTROUS Twitter numbers, Slate says:

From a layman's perspective, being $4 mil short of almost half a billion for something that's given away and charges nothing to use - well, that's not bad. More bad news: they bought a company that uses proprietary tech to do something something leverage disruption blah de bad blah:

This is the modern economy: if you can't make money from your customers, go after non-customers. It's like renting bowling shoes to people who are walking past the alley on the other side of the street.

The article notes that 20% of Americans have an active Twitter account - it seems high, but even if you cut the estimate by half and factor out people who just dip in now and then to follow a link from something someone posted on Facebook, it's still a lot of people. So charge them. Say, 85 cents a month. If this drives a ton of people off the service, well, imagine someone delivering the bad news to investors: "We've lost 65% of our customers. And when we say 'customers' we mean people who didn't give us any money. On the good side, the rest of the 'customers' are now paying us money, whereas before they didn't." You're right; the stock would tank. More:

Unless you archive your tweets, that is. So what is this better thing that could come along? Someone is sitting in a room right now trying to answer that question, but how do you simplify something that's already the definition of simple? it's like trying to reinvent a better fork. I know - we'll simplify it even more, and use only two tines! No, then it would be tongs. And there are already tongs.

THE BIG 80s American Commodore Computer Club, English Commodore Computer Club, Italian Commodore Computer Club, Bloody Abbo-bloody-synnian-Commodore Computer Club darling:

Sorry, that's more of a 90s reference. Here's a collection of 80s magazine covers at Mental Floss. Charming, in their own way.