This is the new "should designers code"

click @#%$ing bait

By now, I've lost count on how many times Twitter has ended, died or fell to it's demise. It's as if Twitter has both a birthday party and a funeral once a year.

Seems like there's always someone who's not happy with it, convinced that the thing they hate is the thing that will certainly kill Twitter.

First, there were the tech blogs for the tech savvy users, worrying that "sponsored tweets could mean the end of Twitter as we know it" and not so tech savvy users complaining about spam accounts and threatening this to be the end of Twitter altogether. Then came the marketers, who are never happy with the growthnumbers in their reports. Later, during the API-gate (remember that?), pissed off developers crowdfunded App.net to build them a better alternative to Twitter. This, actually, wasn't the first time. Back in 2010, Forbes reported of a secret meeting between developers with a very similar plan.

Nowadays, I think, it's all about the search for "the meaning" of Twitter. Generation Y tech-philosophers confused over Who is it for?, What is it for?, What is it today?, Where is it headed to tomorrow? and, as Joshua ended his New Yorker piece, What has Twitter made of itself?

Twitter has died so many times already, I'm starting to believe it could be immortal.

While I don't think it's the "end", I do think it's the beginning of a more realistic (lower) valuation of the product. There are some things they can do to improve things like attribution, retargeting, etc... but to get it there, they may need to take some wild swings at the plate to keep the user experience and the content itself relevant.

My biggest issue wth JD returning to lead Twitter is that he has been the primary barrier in it's growth. Their treatment of third-part developers and apps a few years ago was in some ways a turning point for them. Innovation has been stifled since. When that existed, companies thrived on taking chances and finding new, fresh ways users wanted to use the product.

FB isn't afraid to launch new, bold projects - almost all of them which have failed - they still served as a vehicle to improve the core product. Twitter simply needs to get more bold and think a bit out of the box, allow third-party partners to do it for them again.. or they will continue to decline.

LOL. Remember when Apple was beleaguered?