Over the last few months, I’ve been moving my clients off Twitter.
For most of the last decade I’ve enjoyed representing my clients on Twitter, especially when I ran the Les 3 Vallées account, and was able to engage with holidaymakers enjoying that wonderful ski area.
But as Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and WhatsApp arrived on the scene, the stellar growth of Twitter faltered, and the atmosphere changed.
Twitter is angrier, but also quieter
I can’t claim that Twitter was ever a particularly ‘happy’ place. Over 10 years ago, haters piled on me (after a Tweet suggesting Kinder were gendering their ‘Surprise Eggs’ by including cars in blue packaging and horses in pink packaging) but Twitter does seem to have become an even angrier place since then.
Paradoxically, it’s also a quieter place. In the face of competition, the number of active users plateaued and then started to decline after the company’s acquisition by Elon Musk in 2022.
Hootsuite to Tweetdeck to X Pro
It was around this time that I started rethinking my use of Twitter. My contract with Les 3 Vallées came to an end and I moved from Hootsuite (an excellent tool for manage multiple social media accounts) to Tweetdeck (simpler and less expensive).
Tweetdeck is owned by Twitter. Around a year ago, it was renamed to ‘X Pro’, as Twitter rebranded to X.com.
Why am I giving money to Elon Musk (who is giving it to Trump)?
This underlined to me something I already knew: that paying for ‘X Pro’ every month was putting money into Elon Musk’s pocket.
Elon Musk has endorsed Donald Trump and is giving a large amount of money every month to the newly created ‘America PAC’, designed to drum up Republican votes.
I’m not naïve enough to imagine that withholding a paltry monthly sum will make any difference to the actions of the multi-billionaire, but this is why I am cancelling my Twitter Pro account.
I recognise that I’m completely open to accusations of hypocrisy (I own a Tesla and intend to maintain my free Skipedia Twitter account), but at least I will no longer be contributing directly to the Musk’s pro-Trump election fund.
