The Verge with a behind-the-scenes look at Twitter’s collapse:

It’s an open secret that many employees who remain at Musk’s “hardcore” Twitter are actively looking for other jobs. Even the most publicly cheerful Twitter workers can’t fully mask the despair. On December 29, one tweeted a selfie, smiling in front of an empty office, with the hashtags #solowork, #productivity, and #findingperspective.

Musk himself is starting to appear defeated. Tesla shares started 2022 trading at nearly $400. By September, Tesla’s stock price had dropped by 25 percent. It plummeted again after Musk bought Twitter and ended the year at $123. Investors are begging Musk to step away; Tesla employees are too. 

A real shame.

Casey Newtom, writing for The Verge:

Twitter is offering users another escape hatch from its ranked timeline. The company said today that it will introduce a prominent new toggle in the app to switch from the ranked timeline to the original, reverse-chronological feed. The company says the move comes in recognition of the fact that Twitter is often most useful in real time, particularly during live events such as sports games or the Oscars.

John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:

My strong preference for Tweetbot, on both iOS and Mac, is simple: I prefer its user interface.

Tweetbot presents tweets and replies/mentions in a way that fits my mental model of what Twitter is. Tweetbot makes sense to me — in large part simply because it presents tweets in chronological order. Twitter’s iOS app does none of these things for me. I truly find it confusing. And Twitter no longer even fucking has a first-party native app for the Mac. I don’t want to use a website for Twitter. I want an app.

I think Twitter should reverse course on this whole thing.

I agree with Gruber on this entire thing. Now that Tweetbot can no longer stream tweets, but instead will show them after a one or two minute delay, the app is almost worthless while watching sports. Beside just getting pissed off at the news each day, that’s one of the main reasons I loved Twitter. I’ve never seen a service constantly shoot itself in the foot and alienate its most loyal users as much as Twitter has in the past year.

Kara Swisher, writing for The New York Times:

But by that measure, the rest of us plebes, including Mr. Jones, should probably get no protection if we err, no matter how much we rant that tweeting is a right under the First Amendment. It’s not, because Twitter is not the government and it can decide what and what not to host on its service. In any case, if you get kicked off Twitter, you can always unload your twisted mind on your very own website. And it cannot be said too many times that freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom from consequence.

All this is not to say that fixing Twitter will be easy; in fact, I think at this point it is nearly impossible. Add to that the fact that this is a global issue, making it hard to have any consistent rules that address the complexity of the world and, really, its deep and abiding ugliness.

It’s time for Jack to leave as CEO. He failed at the most important tests for his company, time, and time again.

Twitter has finally reported a profit, The New York Times reports:

On Thursday, it reported a profit in the fourth quarter, the first black ink since going public in 2013. The news pushed its shares up more than 20 percent in early trading to their highest level in more than two years.

Lindy West, writing for The New York Times:

When you work in media, Twitter becomes part of your job. It’s where you orient yourself in “the discourse” — figure out what’s going on, what people are saying about it and, more important, what no one has said yet. In a lucky coup for Twitter’s marketing team, prevailing wisdom among media types has long held that quitting the platform could be a career killer. The illusion that Twitter visibility and professional relevance are indisputably inextricable always felt too risky to puncture. Who could afford to call that bluff and be wrong? So, we stayed, while Twitter’s endemic racist, sexist and transphobic harassment problems grew increasingly more sophisticated and organized.

I think about this all the time. There are times when I find Twitter indispensable (while watching a sporting event and following experts, or when huge news breaks), but at what cost?

Casey Newton, writing at The Verge:

Twitter’s tool for creating tweestorms is now an official part of the app. Threads, as the company is calling them, let you string together tweets by tapping a new plus button in the tweet composer. “A few weeks ago, we expanded our character count to make it easier for people to fit what they’re thinking into a Tweet,” the company said in a blog post. “But we know people also may want to serialize a longer story or thought, or provide ongoing commentary on an event or topic. That’s where this update to threads comes in!”

Yeah, so, about those Nazis tweeting though?