I’ve been threatening to do this for a few months, but today, finally pulled the trigger, on Twitter.
Overrated and overhyped as it is, what drove me over the line is the word this week from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey that Twitter wasn’t going to kick conspiracy theorist Alex Jones off the service because Jones hadn’t broken any Twitter rules.
Me: had enough.
I’ll be honest: it’s not like Twitter has done anything for me in terms of business anyway.
I had just over 2,400 Twitter followers before hitting the deactivate button a few minutes ago. The AFP Facebook page has more than 102,000.
And actually, I wouldn’t say that even that huge base of Facebook likes is all that valuable to me, except for being able to brag about having more than 102,000 people supposedly following us on Facebook, with what Facebook decided to do a couple of years ago with its infamous throttling practice.
But Twitter: never had value.
Before leaving, I looked at my analytics. If I’d get five clicks on a tweet about a story, that would be a top performer.
Google, now, different story. Without having our AFP site being as Google-friendly as possible, we’re nowhere.
So, no, not doing something revolutionary here, dropping off Twitter. Not cutting off my nose to spite my face, or related.
I’m cutting ties with something that I have to admit to having not figured out yet.
One, how Twitter makes money, or even can make money, is beyond my ability to comprehend.
Two, why media types spend so much time building and cultivating their followings. The Roanoke Times is suing a former sportswriter over his Twitter account, claiming it’s worth $150,000, which is plainly ridiculous.
I sit on press row at UVA football and basketball games, and watch fellow sportswriters endlessly tweeting during games, and wonder how their employers make a dime off that.
Where I make dimes through AFP is selling display and link ads that I have to lure your eyeballs to the AFP website to be able to see.
They’re not on Twitter, which is merely a means to an end, a way to perhaps lure people to the AFP site, which for us has proven to be notoriously ineffective.
And yet sportswriters, politics writers, features writers, etc., devote countless hours to Twitter, where they’re drowned out by our numbskull president and the likes of Alex Jones.
Why him as the straw breaking the camel’s back: the dude has been harassing the families of the shooting victims in the Sandy Hook massacre for years, and it’s a national shame that he’s not been bankrupted a million times over for putting those folks through absolute hell.
If, Jack, using Twitter to harass people who had to bury their 5- and 6-year-olds after sending them to school one morning doesn’t break the rules, you need to update your fucking rules.
A pox on your house, how ‘bout?
May Twitter go the way of MySpace, and by God, when it happens, it won’t be a millisecond too soon.
Column by Chris Graham
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