TWITTER, INC.

Twitter, Inc. was the corporate home of the short-post platform people use for live commentary, news flow and public argument. By our assessment, the platform’s real strength was speed: it was good at putting breaking updates, reactions and trending topics into one noisy stream. The downside was the same thing, since the format rewards brevity, pile-ons and a lot of friction in how people talk to each other. In practice Twitter felt like a public square that never really quieted down, with follows, reposts, replies and the search for what was happening right now. It sat apart from longer-form social networks because it was built around the short message and the timeline, and that made it useful for journalists, commentators and obsessives more than for anyone wanting a calm feed.