On Thursday evening, a mass exodus of workers from Twitter made it clear to many that the company was on the edge of disappearing. The trend was started by Kylie Robison (@kyliebytes), a tech reporter for Fortune Magazine, who tweeted about the informal anecdotal perception that it seemed that 75% of employees were choosing to resign and walk away with a three month severance check. This inspired many others to say goodbye to Twitter, and the trend quickly took over ten of the top eleven trending topics.
After weeks of firings and resignations, Twitter was already running on essentially a skeleton crew. The feeling that Twitter was nearing the end was heightened by Musk’s deadline for workers to commit to his “extremely hardcore” work demands of long hours and weekends in office. Anecdotal reports surfaced of a mass exodus of workers, with many choosing to walk away with a severance package rather than commit to the demanding work schedule.
While this is all just informal anecdotal perception at this point, it's clear that something is going on at Twitter. With such a high percentage of employees apparently choosing to leave, it's hard to see how the company can survive much longer.
According to tweets from Alex Heath of the Verge, there are reports that entire infrastructure teams have resigned from Twitter. Heath also reports that many of the employees who have resigned share the belief that Twitter is on the edge of "breaking." Zoe Schiffer of news organization @platformer tweets that the description of the employee situation is that it appears to be a "mass exodus."
You can read the original tweets here:
https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1593399683086327808 https://twitter.com/alexeheath/status/1593378041882820608 https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1593386017137885184
It was a sad night on Twitter as many users said their goodbyes, convinced that the platform was coming to an end.
Scott Hendison, a former Twitter employee, tweeted: "Could tonight actually be the end of Twitter? A lot of gleeful people sure seem to hope so."
Many users from all around the world came to Twitter to say goodbye, including journalist Elizabeth Spiers.
Spiers tweeted: "As someone who lived through the heyday of geocities, MySpace, blogspot, typepad, tumblr, and now twitter… it'll be fine."
On November 18, 2022, many tweets expressed a gentle or bittersweet humor. For example, one tweep noted that his only regret was that the beloved Star Wars actor, Mark Hamill, never followed him on Twitter. In response, Mark Hamill tweeted: "Please have no regrets." Popular security researcher Jane Manchun Wong asked if any of her followers had a crush on her, in case Twitter was gone for good. Search trends tracker, Google Trends, revealed that many people are searching for a Twitter alternative. Google searches for both Tumblr and Mastodon have shot up over the past days.
Apparently, so many people were using Tumblr that the service temporarily crashed. In response, Tumblr tweeted a humorous response:
hold up like 12 new ppl joined.
we're working on it. give it a sec 🙂 https://t.co/Upd5HEaIBq— tumblr dot com the website and app (@tumblr) November 18, 2022
The tweets about Twitter trending overnight reflected concern over how long Twitter is going to be available, perhaps as many folks read about the mass exodus of employees. Ten out of the top eleven trending topics were about Twitter:
1·#RIPTwitter
Trending with #TwitterDown
2·Elon
Trending with Twitter HQ
3·Tumblr
Trending with MySpace, Vine
4· Mastodon
222K Tweets
5· Discord
1.02M Tweets
6· Since Twitter
543K Tweets
7· Before Twitter 682K Tweets 8· Insta 282K Tweets 9· Space Karen 27.2K Tweets 11 · #TwitterIsOverParty The trending topic of Space Karen is a reference to a projection on the side of the Twitter headquarters yesterday evening that scrolled a series of amusing monikers for Elon Musk, with Space Karen inspring a great deal of mirth among Twitter users.
With Twitter's San Francisco headquarters going "hardcore" tonight, many are wondering if this is the end of the social media platform. With infrastructure teams running at bare bones level or less, it's not surprising that so many feel that Twitter has reached its end.
A test of Twitter's resilience will come this weekend with the start of the World Cup, which is expected to bring a huge amount of activity to the platform. This will be a good indicator of whether or not Twitter can continue to function with such high levels of usage.
Twitter is restricting employee access to all its buildings this weekend with no reason given. This has led to speculation that the company may not survive the weekend.
The trending topics on Twitter are dominated by tweets related to the demise of the company. Many users are saying goodbye to the social media platform, adding to the perception that it is dying or at least near breaking.
However, it is possible that Twitter will see increased traffic during the World Cup this weekend and we will have a better idea of its survival by Monday.
Twitter is continuing its efforts to make the platform more user-friendly and accessible. The latest change is a new reply interface that aims to make it easier to have conversations on Twitter.
The new interface includes a number of features, such as the ability to see who you're replying to, who else is involved in the conversation, and what the conversation is about. This should make it easier to follow conversations and understand what's going on.
The interface is currently being tested with a small group of users and will be rolled out more broadly in the coming weeks. Twitter has been making a number of changes lately, including increasing the character limit and adding support for live-streaming video.
It's clear that Twitter is trying to make itself more user-friendly and attractive as a platform. With these latest changes, it seems poised to continue its growth in the coming years.