I think I disagree. Twitter's economic moat seems very narrow. From a user's perspective it's just a pub/sub messaging system. Facebook has a much deeper set of features. It feels very much like Twitter can be replaced by a decentralized, open alternative if executed well. If Twitter's ads start to get annoying enough, or the network itself becomes full of trash, people will be ready for an alternative at some point. (And in general, these types of networked messaging services fall in and out of favor every 5-7 years or so it seems.) I don't think the same holds true for Facebook (which has been tried before and failed.)
But I look at something like the bitcoin blockchain and wonder if that concept is just a few conceptual degrees from something that could replace the twitter stream. In 5-10 years will we be using twitter or will all devices just have a way to broadcast out into the ether, with a 'distributed ledger' of messages maintained by agents on the network?
I'm almost certain there is someone tooling away on this right now, the question is will they be able to make it accessible and easy to migrate onto from twitter.
Very unlikely to happen. Traction is such a huge factor why people use social networks that outweighs all the features such as ad-free or better usability by the amount of 10 probably.
Twitter needs to f up big time to lose its current popularity.
But I look at something like the bitcoin blockchain and wonder if that concept is just a few conceptual degrees from something that could replace the twitter stream. In 5-10 years will we be using twitter or will all devices just have a way to broadcast out into the ether, with a 'distributed ledger' of messages maintained by agents on the network?
I'm almost certain there is someone tooling away on this right now, the question is will they be able to make it accessible and easy to migrate onto from twitter.