By Dave Lee / Bloomberg Opinion
The late chef and author Anthony Bourdain used to talk of “Failing Restaurant Syndrome,” the sad stench of an eatery going under. The clientele begins to change. Staff morale drops. Bills stop being paid.
It’s “an affliction,” Bourdain wrote in “Kitchen Confidential,” “that causes owners to flail about looking for a quick fix, a fast masterstroke that will ‘turn things around,’ cure all their ills, reverse the already irreversible trend toward insolvency.”
I’m starting to think the same thing could be said about struggling social networks: Failing Social Network Syndrome, I guess. X, formerly Twitter, utterly reeks of it.
On Monday night, a pungent spectacle erupted when Elon Musk held a “conversation” with former President Donald Trump. This fast masterstroke, which Musk hopes will show X’s political relevancy, merely underlined how far the once-vibrant and powerful network has fallen.
First came the more than 40 minutes of technical problems, which Musk quickly but unconvincingly attributed to a cyberattack. The claim was quickly debunked by The Verge, citing internal company sources.
Once underway, Musk and Trump rambled into the night; on matters of Trump’s attempted assassination, immigration policy and various assorted grievances. Musk himself admitted it would not be an interview, per se; hence the softball questioning and Musk’s apparent audition for a job as some kind of government budget overseer. The man who spent $44 billion buying Twitter thinks he’s the ideal person to judge unnecessary spending, apparently.
Ultimately, what we had was the owner of a prominent U.S. social network using his platform to promote and endorse a presidential candidate, which, by the way, Musk has every right to do, though some of us remember when Republicans in Washington were screaming bloody murder about political bias on these platforms. (Democrats are now trying to point out the hypocrisy. They shouldn’t bother.)
I’ll leave further dissection of the call’s content to the fact-checkers; God help them. What’s more relevant for this column is what Monday’s conversation says about the dire state of X, which Musk bought almost two years ago.
The whiff of Failing Social Network Syndrome gets stronger by the day. Advertising revenue has fallen off a cliff; commercial deals have collapsed; and regulators are closing in with very real threats of catastrophic fines. A former Twitter executive has called for Musk’s arrest for stoking unrest in the United Kingdom. The company has skipped paying rent at its headquarters, so workers are moving into cheaper offices in San Jose. Two recent senior departures followed the flurry of talent walking out the door; while others who were unfairly fired are winning compensation. Musk’s pledge to rid the network of bots has failed. A promise that X would be a significant banking app by the end of this year has failed to even produce a launch date. His plan to turn X into an “everything app” hasn’t materialized; and never will. X is now in the full-flailing-about stage of Failing Social Network Syndrome, suing advertisers who followed Musk’s advice to stay off the platform.
It’s all very embarrassing. And, more to the point, utterly dull. Twitter has become a single-issue network, the home of the culture wars. I suspect Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino’s recent agreement that X was a digital “swing state” will hold true in that politicians and journalists will soon lose interest in X once the votes have been counted.
And then there is very little left: A social network needs more than politics to thrive. Twitter used to be a place that housed disparate and vibrant interest groups. They talked about politics, sure, but also TV, movies, music, books, food, sports and technology. Businesses would respond to complaints and offer customer service. Local authorities would host Q&As and keep communities up-to-date. Meet-ups were organized, friendships were made, movements were given their oxygen.
Slowly, these constituencies are finding homes elsewhere. Just in the time for the new English football season, for instance, several prominent football journalists and blogs have migrated to Threads. BlueSky said it had seen a “surge” in users from the U.K. since the fallout from Musk’s claim that “civil war” was “inevitable” in the country.
These migrations may seem small, and it will take time to show up in analytics. X was never going to unravel in a day, but it is unraveling, a direct consequence of what tech commentator Casey Newton described as Musk’s “political project,” his chance to bend a public forum to his will, to gain outsized attention for his right-wing viewpoints. Some lap that up, but it’s not enough. I’m confident this presidential election will be X’s last.
As Bourdain put it, “Our food, while charming to some, was unappealing to most.”
Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion’s U.S. technology columnist. He was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and BBC News. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion. ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
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