Musk is nearly done destroying what made Twitter Twitter (gift link)

[ificandream]

By Phillip Bump
Washington Post

There’s a reason that Google became one of the world’s largest companies: Its search engine was very good at sending people to other sites.

Those too young to remember the era would find it hard to believe how terrible internet search was in pre-Google times. In the very early days, when there weren’t that many websites at all, curated lists of sites were produced by companies like Yahoo. Then came attempts at mechanically indexing sites, like AltaVista, but those were easily gamed. Then came Google, which figured out that it could use websites’ links to one another to create a metric of importance that then informed its search results. Looking for information about cars? Well, this website about cars is linked by more sites than any other and has the most people vouching for it — so it goes at the top of the list.

This is obviously an oversimplification, but the central point remains important. Google built a business around getting people off its site. The company grew and branched out, but I suspect you still use that core tool regularly, if not daily. It was perhaps the best encapsulation of a mantra I first heard from web pioneer Dave Winer: The more you send people away, the more they come back.

The more you point out what’s interesting on the internet, the more people will come back to find more interesting things. Google’s algorithm did that well. And so, once upon a time, did Twitter.

Read more: https://wapo.st/3PQ1sUq

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[bhikkhu]

1. Good article. The long and short of it seems to be - he's building another echo chamber.

When you discourage links and devise ways to keep people's eyes on your site, regardless of anything else, and you make that the algorithm that drives the whole machine, you basically build an echo chamber. Some people will buy into it, but it will always be a niche. It never works, and it certainly doesn't grow, the way an organic, connected and evolving forum can grow.