One of the biggest open-ended questions in the tech world is whether Twitter is truly dying—and if it is, what will replace it. Last December, I argued that whatever came next might feel like Twitter in certain ways, but that ultimately there was probably no way to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the infamous bird site.
Six months later we’re a little closer to getting answers. The future seems to lie not in one single Twitter replacement, but in myriad Twitter-like websites, one for every corner of the web. What’s fascinating about the spread of Twitter alternatives is that this is not the first time we’ve seen a communication interface atomize like this. Looking at a previous social media diaspora therefore may give us a clue about where Twitter’s future is heading.