All this reminds me of World of Warcraft. In 2004-2008ish, WoW was a cultural phenomenon. South Park made an episode about it, there was a famous question on Jeopardy about it, parents played it, celebrities played it. Then it started to fade away for many reasons. But as it was fading, people were asking what was the next MMO, what was the "WoW-killer". It never came - sure there were and are other MMOs (ESO, FF, GW2, etc) that people played, but nothing ever peaked like WoW, because WoW happened at a unique moment in time. It was right before social media exploded, and so people were able to be social with each other in the game, creating a unique community situation. All the other MMOs (mostly) grew up with social media, so the social effects were diminished. They were just games.
I see an analog with Twitter. There will never be a Twitter killer, a Twitter 2.0. There will be successful, Twitter-like things (Threads, Bluesky) but nothing can be like Twitter because the era is gone. (Which is the point of essay, more or less). Something else will happen that will engross us for a while, and I'm curious what it will be (and really wish I could predict it!), but nobody, not even Twitter (just like WoW itself was never a WoW killer), will be another Twitter.
I see an analog with Twitter. There will never be a Twitter killer, a Twitter 2.0. There will be successful, Twitter-like things (Threads, Bluesky) but nothing can be like Twitter because the era is gone. (Which is the point of essay, more or less). Something else will happen that will engross us for a while, and I'm curious what it will be (and really wish I could predict it!), but nobody, not even Twitter (just like WoW itself was never a WoW killer), will be another Twitter.