Twitter started up in 2006, two years after Facebook started. I don't think in the development stage of either media group.....they ever thought much over politicization or being tagged as propaganda vehicles. They just felt....people would comment on their lives, their jobs, their thrills, and share stupid cat-pictures. Somewhere in the mix....money would be made.
So you move up to 2008, and this general feeling after the election....Barak Obama's team found some clues to use both Facebook and Twitter. No one can say that it was a big deal, but obviously on college campuses.....these two platforms got the Obama 'brand' out in front of people. The Hillary people....I think....screwed up by not grasping the impact. As for John McCain's people....they were still living in the 1980s, and felt that newspapers were the 'charm' of their campaign.
Trump? Oddly enough....there in his early sixties....he gravitated over to Twitter. His short blunt chatter had a great fit on Twitter.
So today.....Facebook and Twitter are standing there with a problem. They can't ride the 'wave' out to the future. They've anchored themselves as a open but private property platform. Their profit machine? It is entirely attached to people being hyped-up over politics....both left and right. If you removed the news angle and political chatter....you could cut 50-percent of the profit overnight with the new 'giants'.
Dodging this whole Hunter story and creating a mess to clean up? Twitter and Facebook are now stuck having to explain things to the Senate, and it won't go in a pretty way. For Jack and Twitter? I suspect that Jack will give notice in December, and quietly leave the company by early spring of 2021. I don't think he wants to be part of the clean-up crew anymore.
As for Facebook? I think they will end up accepting some break-up of the empire in 2021, and the frustration crowd will just more hostile and fed-up with the whole social media game.
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