In my office I am considered a total geek. The reason for this? A love of social media, in all its warm-hearted and society-levelling guises. Twitter, in particular, is the platform I adore, a place where the little person can take on the big conglomerate, and win, or where you can get the most hilarious commentary on “Take Me Out”. You know, the two extremes.
For many people what makes Twitter great is its ethics. The tweeters I follow, of which there are about 600 (!!), are a wonderful bunch of intelligent, liberal and opinionated darlings, able to express opinions on everything from politics to socks. They are accepting, dedicated to helping their fellow users, and just... well… nice.
The other thing about Twitter is the approach it has to the world. They are currently trying to make money, but mainly because they have been making such a massive loss over the past few years. The priority is building Twitter as a whole, and this selfless approach is probably a major component of the lovely Twitter that we use day to day.
It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I read the news that Google and Facebook are both in initial talks about buying Twitter.
You see, both Google and Facebook are the equivalent of the internet mafia. The control everything we do, even if we don’t realise it. They collect our information, use it for their own money making purposes, and commit some seriously dodgy deals with all of our data. Google goes by the slogan of “Don’t be evil” – but I think their philanthropic aspirations have long been left in the dust of capitalism and world-domination. Despite their usefulness, these two companies are definitely internet’s bad guys, and whilst I would never want to get rid of them, the prospect of them owning (and ruining) my precious Twitter is frankly terrifying.
Of course, it could work the other way. Google or Facebook (or, as we shall call them for convenience, Goobook) could help Twitter fulfil its potential. With an amazing level of search and so many additional features, Twitter could become a truly fascinating source of information transmission and social interaction. As it no doubt gets developed by Goobook, the internet behemoth, it could become a high performance machine that keeps its identity but in a much improved way.
However, on the other hand Goobook truly could ruin it. They could integrate it into Facebook and take away its USP and unique identity. They could cram it with so much advertising that we cannot trust what we read any more, that special relevance and trust would be shot to shit, and users would be left afloat in a sea of consumerism and selfish behaviour, all that movement against the global powers halted before it really got a chance to begin.
So, dear readers, what do you think? A chance for expansion and creation, or a nail in the coffin of a new kind of selfless social network? Discuss!