"I am going to use her latest WIRED article to illustrate an all-too-common trope in reporting on alternative social media: it’s what I call 'The Killer Hype Cycle.' ...
The Cycle goes like this: first, a journalist notices a fledgling alternative social media system. Looking for a click-worthy angle, the journalist declares it the next ‘Facebook Killer’ or ‘Twitter Killer,’ arguing that within months, the corporate social media giant will be ‘killed’ because its users will leave en masse for the new alternative. Later, when someone notices that Facebook or Twitter is still active despite the presence of the ‘Killer,’ another journalist (or even the original journalist) will declare the alternative a ‘failure’ or simply ‘dead,’ mainly because it did not attract hundreds of millions of new users in a matter of weeks. The cycle appears to end—that is, until another alternative is noticed by a tech reporter, and the cycle is repeated."
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 15.7 ms ] thread"I am going to use her latest WIRED article to illustrate an all-too-common trope in reporting on alternative social media: it’s what I call 'The Killer Hype Cycle.' ...
The Cycle goes like this: first, a journalist notices a fledgling alternative social media system. Looking for a click-worthy angle, the journalist declares it the next ‘Facebook Killer’ or ‘Twitter Killer,’ arguing that within months, the corporate social media giant will be ‘killed’ because its users will leave en masse for the new alternative. Later, when someone notices that Facebook or Twitter is still active despite the presence of the ‘Killer,’ another journalist (or even the original journalist) will declare the alternative a ‘failure’ or simply ‘dead,’ mainly because it did not attract hundreds of millions of new users in a matter of weeks. The cycle appears to end—that is, until another alternative is noticed by a tech reporter, and the cycle is repeated."