The Rise and Fall of Social Media Empires: Twitter (X), Part 2 Podcast Transcript

Twitter after 2011: 100,000,000 users, the Arab Spring, and the Trump years.  Join us as we explore Twitter's glory days and share some of our own experiences and thoughts on the platform and the lead-up to Elon Musk's purchase.

Taryn Ward  Hi. I'm Taryn Ward,

Steven Jones and I'm Steven Jones,

TW.  and this is Breaking the Feed, Social Media: Beyond the Headlines. 

SJ.  We're taking a closer look at the core issues around social media, including the rise and fall of social media empires, to better understand the role social media plays in our everyday lives and society.

TW.  In recent episodes, we've been looking at the rise and fall of several social media empires. Last time, we took a closer look and how Twitter started, and this time, we'll focus specifically on what came after 2010 through two Elon Musk's purchase in the platform.

SJ.  We'll start as always with a core question, in this case, a continuation of last week's, which was: What made Twitter, Twitter?" 

SJ.  By 2011, the platform had reached 100 million users, and six months later, it had grown by another 40% to 140 million users. We talked last time about the role that Twitter more than any other social network plays and sharing experiences of significant current events. Perhaps the best-known example of this was the Arab Spring. This topic is worthy of its own episode. But for a quick recap, the Arab Spring was a protracted series of protests, uprisings in armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world. In the early 2010s.

TW.  Beginning in Tunisia and December of 2010, protests arose in Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Morocco by January of 2011, where the Tunisian government was overthrown that same month, over the next few months, we saw protests continue and expand throughout much of the Arab world.

SJ.  And I remember watching this in real-time, and I think much of the West's perception was based on the process into RIA Square in Cairo, Egypt, was captured our attention through, you know, the mainstream media, and it certainly appears that in that, in that case, social media played a really crucial role in sharing protests or sharing, not only what was happening, but also about going to the protests, and, you know, sharing video and photos in real-time, the volume of that was so great that it became really difficult for the government to actually suppress information about what was actually going on.

TW.  Yes, I remember that, too. I think that's I think it did play an important role, and it is worth examining, and I'm sure researchers will, will continue to look at this for years to come. But I think it's worth remembering that the internet, and as a result, social media penetration really varied amongst the countries that were impacted by the Arab Spring. So, you know, in somewhere like Bahrain, where it was 88%, that that's a different story, maybe then somewhere like Yemen, in Libya, where the percentage of people using these platforms was much lower. That's not to take anything away from the role that it played at all. But I think it's important that you know, especially for people who were in the West at that time, not to assume that everybody was walking around with a smartphone, watching this unfold on Twitter. 

SJ.  Yeah, I think that's, that is really important part of the narrative from Twitter and Meta about the Arab Spring was the implication, at least, that it wouldn't have been possible and that these protests wouldn't have happened if social media wasn't available to the press testers, and there were certainly examples where it was really, really important. But there were other examples where a couldn't possibly have played much of a role, because as you just said, they didn't have that, that access, and I think we have to be very weary all the time about what social media says about itself. Because, at the end of the day, it's often a little bit self-serving. Right, and I think as time has gone by, we you said about academics, I think there has been a reasonable amount of research done on this, and as time goes by, particularly from Middle Eastern scholars, there is, I think, more and more critical approach taken to the to the work that social with the impact that social media had in the workings of those of those protests. What do you what do you think, Taryn? I mean, you you were probably a more avid social media user at that time, then, than I was, I would think, certainly on Twitter.

TW.  I think that's fair. I think one thing to remember about, you know, the value of how social media companies see themselves and present themselves has its own value, but it's not maybe what you think it is. It's not, it's not about the truth of that assertion. It's really about what it tells us that they want us to believe and how they see themselves, and so I think remembering that when we think about, you know, what role do they want us to think they played in the Arab Spring? And you know, at the time, I remember watching this all play out and thinking, you know, everybody seems really confident about how this is going to go and how this is going to play out. But we don't know. So there, there was a lot of hope, and there were there was a lot of feeling at the time, especially in the US, that this was going to be this great sweeping movement, and it was just going to be better for everyone, and we know now, of course, that it's a little bit more complicated than that, and, you know, let's not forget that there have been a lot of well documented, well-documented complaints about some of these larger social media networks, working with governments to target dissidents, to suppress free speech and protest movements, and, you know, they, it would be difficult for any one of them to claim that they only did the right thing, during this period of time and never made any mistakes, and I think we have to remember that too because it gives us it's an opportunity to think about the amount of power these platforms have, and whether it turns out well or not, is often not really up to them. But it's it's a lot of it's a lot of power to get them. 

SJ.  Yeah, it really is only that's a that's an excellent, that's an excellent point, and a good place to end this. As I said, I think we could have probably an entire series about these issues and certainly some detailed episodes. But for now, we're going to move on, and when we talked about the rise and fall of Facebook, we did talk about the purchases made, most notably probably WhatsApp and Instagram. Twitter was certainly less acquisitive. But in 2012, it bought a relatively small company called fine, and ended up releasing that app in 2013, and it was extremely popular. I know that my kids were on it, and my youngest, was particularly unhappy when it was was closed down, and she won't mind me saying so.

TW.  Well, the good news is your youngest was not alone. In fact, Elon Musk ran a poll after he took over and asked whether Vine should come back whether they should bring back Vine, and nearly 5 million people voted, and something like 70% said yes. So apparently, X, formerly known as Twitter, is working on making that happen.

SJ.  Which I'm sure will make Natalya and all of her age group very, very happy. It's an interesting move for Twitter at this point, right? Because obviously, they didn't feel that they needed to it wasn't like core to their business back when they closed it down, and perhaps the cynical and heaven forefend that we would consider ourselves to be cynical might think that that's because a new vine might compete well against Instagram, and Tiktok, which will be a subject of a future episode. But what do you think the motivation is here, Taryn?

TW.  I think that's probably some of it. I think that Elon Musk has received a lot of positive feedback on his responsiveness, whether it's somebody who's tweeting about a problem they're having with their account, or a new suggestion, or a new idea, I think people really liked this idea that he's out there, you know, addressing these issues and trying to make things work. In this case, though, I would suggest that it may indicate a lack of confidence in the existing offering and a lack of a really solid plan on how to move forward. Because bringing back vine and trying to go down the road of competing with Instagram and Tiktok is sort of a very different thing than what what Twitter is focused on, or x is focused on at the moment. So to me, I see this, and I think, maybe they don't really have a plan, and they're not sure where they're going. So they're just kind of doing that thing where they throw a bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks. 

SJ.  Yeah, and I think it was important to raise this because of that core question we have, which is what made twitter twitter and it was, as we've said before, I think it was snappy, it was quick. It was extraordinarily immediate sharing of sometimes in name but often very consequential events like the one we just talked about, with the protests in the Arab Spring. So that's not to say that Vine wasn't popular and important to the people who used it. But it's hard to see that it's core to Twitter's business and what we see as what has made it successful. Whereas with Instagram, it was actually much easier to see that right. It was just a different way of sharing your daily experiences and updating people with, you know, what you saw at the time they purchased it. Obviously, it's changed over time, and WhatsApp also made sense because it was a messaging programme, and it connects people and provided a huge amount of data to to Facebook. So yeah, I mean, I think that you hit the nail on the head, it does feel a bit like well, we can do this because we have the IP so let's see what we can. We can make a bit, and you know this people seem to like this right now. Even if it isn't core to what we are, the bulk of our users do.

TW.  And to be fair, Twitter needs to see Twitter or "X" needs to see some growth, and, you know, although I can't say that Vine was the thing that did it back then, not long after this purchase, they did see some significant growth.

SJ.  Right? Absolutely. In September 2013, the company's data showed they had 200 million users sending 400 million tweets a day, with nearly 60% of those tweets being sent from mobile devices. But not everything was going well. The same year, Twitter launched hashtag music for iPhone, and to be honest, I actually had no idea this had happened. Until we were doing the research for this, this episode was probably gives you an idea about how well it went. Apparently, it was intended for music discovery, people were posting new bands and whatever. But you couldn't actually play the music without an outside subscription to either Spotify or radio, and I think we can agree since I don't think it's around anymore. It didn't really catch on. Taryn, did you know this, it happened or even use it.

TW.  I have a vague memory of this all happening. I think it may have coincided with actually the birth of one of our children. So it was about that same period where my brain was just a little foggy, I was more sleep deprived than usual. So I can't say that I have a very clear memory of using this. But I definitely think it's safe to say it was if not a flop, not a not a huge success, because it's not something that has continued.

SJ.  Yeah, and I mean, I think because super apps are part of Elon his plan, he does sort of say that, you know, you if you want to people to use your service or or engage in other types of activity, you do have to plan that carefully, and make sure that it's simple for them. We know that obviously this one, this example was not well executed at a time when other things were going well for Twitter. 

TW.  Yes, and for that reason, and I think a few others. By 2015, a number of industry observers sort of felt that Twitter was over, or it was nearly over and commented that the period of huge growth had come to an end or was coming to an end, and, you know, I think there was a general sense that maybe that was true for people who were using the platform regularly. But, of course, this didn't account for the impact that Donald Trump would have, either through his presidential campaign or through his actual presidency. 

SJ.  Yeah, Taryn no discussion of Twitter, certainly during this period, but probably no discussion of Twitter full-stop is complete without conversation about Donald Trump.  The most famous or perhaps infamous Tweeter, at least until the arrival of Elon as CEO, and Trump was a very active Tweeter. 

SJ.  Here are some stats which I managed to pull together for this podcast. 59,553 tweets, and retweets of those 46,919 were original tweets. He had 88,936,841 followers, he received, and I'm going to shorten this one 389 million retweets, 1.6 billion Likes, and the famous last tweet from the original Donald Trump account was, and I quote:

"To all those of who have asked, I will not be going to the inauguration on January 20th."   

And that was sent on January 8 2021, and I think, you know, it's not unknown to all of our listeners that shortly after that, his account was terminated by Twitter, something we'll talk about, perhaps a bit later.

TW.  46,000 original tweets, that's, that's really unbelievable, and it's difficult in this in this one episode, to really capture the impact that that Trump had on Twitter if you didn't live it yourself. So Trump tweeted about Lockheed Martin on the 22nd of December 2016, for example, and this tweet came out after the market had closed, the very next trading day Lockheed Martin stock price dropped by 2%, and just for For context, that means that its market value dropped by over $1 billion. So this one tweet really, really had a huge impact. Now it, I'm not arguing that the other 46,000 had had quite the same impact, but many of them did have a very, very big impact, and so I think when we talk about Twitter, you're right we can't really talk about it during this period without without addressing some of these things, academics have have studied the impact of President Trump's tweets on the stock market more broadly, and I'm sure we'll continue to do so. But, you know, so far, they found that the US stock market tends to decline over the first 30 minutes following his publishing a tweet and that trading volume and volatility are significantly higher after a tweet. They also found that tweets affiliated with topics trade war and border security were followed by negative returns on the s&p 500, increased volatility, increased trading volume, significant decrease in the Hang Seng Index and a significant increase in the gold price. That's a lot to there's a lot of control to have. Not just from Twitter, but but through Donald Trump on Twitter, and again, 46,000 tweets, over 88 million followers. It's a huge impact.

SJ.  Yeah, I mean, you know, famously, Taylor Swift will tell you that Swifties can achieve anything. But the impact of Donald Trump, and let's face it, Lockheed Martin, is a bastion of the US defence industry, and I think it is it's remarkable that a president-elect would write a tweet and remove a billion dollars from one of the US his major defence can track his value like that. I can't think of another time when that there has happened. I mean, that I am sure that had been President considered presidential opinions about defence contracts, which probably impacted stock prices of defence contractors, that's reasonable. But it takes literally 30 seconds to tweet, and we all know, there was no review process involved in that, and that has a huge that causes a huge problem, and I think, you know, as you said, every time he tweets, it impacts the stock market, and I think a lot of people, including his supporters will say, Well, that doesn't really bother me. That's the rich, but no, it is not is your pension plan that impacts your pension plan and your financial well-being, and it really is worth thinking about whether that's a great idea or not free speech, notwithstanding that one individual can have that sort of impact, particularly given that not everything that was said on Twitter was actually true or accurate, Taryn? 

TW.  That's right, and you know, we can talk about the stock market and that's important and that impact, but it didn't stop there. So according to say a molly, who's the Director for propaganda Research at the University of Texas, Austin Centre for media engagement. Trump's in this is a quote, Trump's primary use of Twitter has been to spread propaganda and manipulate public opinion, and this is another quote he used Twitter to D legitimise information or to delegitimize the positions of his opponents. So following on that a CNBC analysis of Trump's tweets during his presidency revealed that his most popular and frequent posts largely spread disinformation and distrust. Many of his most liked tweets contain falsehoods, or let's say misrepresentations. While the topic he posted about most frequently fake news was a weapon for undermining more legitimate information.

SJ.  It's really interesting, isn't it? And I mean, anybody who lived it probably can't forget. But of 10 Trump's 10 most popular tweets for contain false claims related to the 2020 election results. Obvious 100 most popular posts, 36 contained election-related falsehoods, and those 36 tweets received a collective 22.6 million Likes and 3.9 million retweets, and that is the sort of results that led the US Federal Election Commission there, Ellen Weintraub to argue that social media has no idea how seriously it's hurting democracy, and that's a direct quote from an interview with her on NPR in 2020. Taryn, you were in the US for much of this while I was a transfixed train wreck observer from north of the border, but what was it? What was it like, you know, actually, they're really immersed in this sort of experience.

TW.  It was an interesting time to be alive, I think, feel we were at the time. At the time, I was living in Miami, and Miami is sort of its own bubble and a lot of ways, but there's definitely a split in Miami and outside of Miami between Trump supporters and and everyone else really, and I think Trump supporters sort of either really believed he was doing the right thing. So even if they didn't believe his individual tweets or that these were factual, they believed that there was some bigger purpose or some bigger reason that justified it. The other part of his supporters really thought that this didn't matter very much. Why are we talking about his tweets? Who cares what he's doing it on social media, let's look at, you know, the job numbers and the unemployment rate, and I made more money this year than I did last year, and I paid less for gas at the pump, and then, you know, people who were not big fans of trolled were sort of looking at this and saying, What is wrong with you, this is a big problem, there's no larger purpose. This is dangerous, and, and it's really harmful, and so we were, you know, in, in an area of Miami that was split, really between all three, and you know, our family members living across the US were sort of scattered across all three too, and so you could have a conversation in the morning with one group of people and get one very clear, specific viewpoint, and then a different conversation with another group, and hear a completely different version of what was happening, and then finally, in the end, a third group that had another take completely, and you really had to read the tweets yourself to sort of parse what was actually sad, what the responses were like, and how it fit into the larger narrative.

SJ.  Yeah, um, you know, I don't think any of this was accidental, right? I mean, I think that the Republican Party in particular, but let's face it, to some degree, political parties across the western world have cottoned on to the idea that polarising the, the electorate is greater provided you're part of the polarised electorate is bigger than the other guys, and, you know, these these tweets, and, and many other things were, were polarising and largely has, based on the evidence of the quotes we had sort of untrue or misleading, and one of the things that I noticed was that, from the Canadian perspective, and having grown up in the UK, where people are much less respectful of the position of, for example, Prime Minister, and if the Prime Minister is lying, the public and the media don't so much have a problem, saying those are lie ease, and this is why, but even on media, which was actually very critical of the president, there was, there was seem to be an absolute absence of any willingness to call a lie, a lie, and, and deal with it as a deliberate falsehood. That's dangerous when you have somebody who's responsible for, you know, one of the three core pillars of the way that the US government works, head of the executive branch and can actually say, more or less whatever he likes, and then, like 20 minutes later, say something diametrically opposed if he feels like it, and that becomes government policy until he changed his mind again, the third pillar of government, it seems really weird. Does that make, do you think that made the US particularly vulnerable?  The this lack of willingness to really go after its highest political office?

TW.  That's a good question. I think, Oh, I know less about Canada because I've not lived there. I think compared to the UK, in some ways, the US electorate is more trusting. It's worth more and less trusting of elected officials, right, and I think, are sort of weak, nobody was ready for this kind of thing. I think in the past, politicians had used social media sparingly. Presidents before President Obama were fairly formal. I don't know if you remember, but there was a whole thing about the jacket choice that President Obama made. It wasn't formal enough. It wasn't the right colour. I don't remember because I don't care at all. This was a whole. 

SJ.  It was tan. 

TW.  Yeah, whatever it was, for a whole new cycle. It was like, Oh, the, you know, the dignity of the office has been compromised, and so I think it meant that when President Trump was in office and started, you know, tweeting things that were really out there, I think we can fairly say that nobody was really sure what to do with it. I think some people were genuinely shocked and thought, well, this can't be alive because surely no president would do this if it weren't true, and then some people were just really not sure how to respond. I think there's another group of people who just didn't want to be in his crosshairs. Having known people who have had legal dealings with him. It's not a position anybody really wants to be in, and so you know, you are putting a target on your back not just with President Trump or former President Trump, but all of his followers who are not unlike some of Elon Musk's followers, and simply by doing this series of episodes, we've now put targets on our backs. Because there are a lot of people who, you know, you can't disagree with anything that that either of these two people say, without feeling like you deserve without them feeling like you deserve consequences. 

SJ.  Yeah, no, it's it. That is that is absolutely true, and it is really fascinating, and we'll obviously talk a little bit more about the consequences of having a former president, or even future president in control of his own social media network when we talk about new Twitter's and through social. But, you know, I think there's no doubt that, that for a social media network focused on sharing news, Twitter became the news story for much of this period, and you know, that it's generally not a great idea for a social media network to be the new story. I mean, I think Mark Zuckerberg has found that out and goes to great lengths to not be the new story and, and, you know, the consequence of this turmoil, maybe set up Twitter for the eventual takeover by Elon Musk. But we'll talk about more of that later.

TW.  Next time, we'll talk about the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, and what's happened since Musk's purchase and what the future might hold. In the meantime, we'll post a transcript of this episode with references on our website. You can find this and more information about us at TheBrightApp.com.

SJ.  Until next time, I'm Steven Jones,

 TW.  and I'm Taryn Ward.

SJ.  Thank you for joining us for Breaking the Feed, Social Media: Beyond the Headlines.