Twitter (probably) isn’t dying, but is it becoming less sociable?

[cross-posted at Medium] Twitter’s demise has been announced so many times over its lifetime that it’s hard to keep track of all the premature eulogies (and this one from a year ago is actually pretty insightful), but there seems to be a new intensity in the circulation of decline narratives at the moment. A couple …

What If Google Bought Twitter? A Conversation and Some Further Thoughts

Twitter has been in the news recently, for all the wrong reasons. Business media report that Twitter shareholders are disappointed with the company’s latest results; and this follows recent turmoil in the company’s leadership which saw the departure of controversial CEO Dick Costolo and the (temporary) return of co-founder Jack Dorsey until a permanent replacement …

Recent media coverage: Twitter data ownership and the 2013 #qldfloods

I’m writing this from Cambridge (MA, USA; not UK), where I’m a few days into my stint as a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research New England. I’m thrilled to be able to spend some quality time with the Social Media group here, including long-time colleagues like Kate Crawford (who has worked with us on our …

New M/C Journal Article on the Harmful Effects of Twitter’s Corporate Policies

October has been a busy month – as those of you who follow my personal research blog may already have seen, our Mapping Online Publics colleague Tim Highfield and I have presented several papers at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference in Manchester and the European Communication Conference (ECREA) in Istanbul. Additionally, I also …