Take for granted for a moment the assertion that Twitter is, on balance, good and worth having. Admittedly, this is a stretch. But, having accepted that proposition for the sake of argument, I must ask: are you worried about Twitter? If you listen to the Wall St. mavens, perhaps you should be. Like many companies of the Tech Boom 2.0 that it was born near (chronologically and geographically), insane public valuations created expectations and budgets that become hanging albatrosses around their baby necks. So, if Twitter is good and useful (remember, that’s the granted portion), what is to be done?
Nationalize Twitter, of course.
There are two interplaying prongs to the argument as to why we should nationalize Twitter, from my vantage point. The first is an issue of simply viability in the present and near future, and the second is an extension of a philosophy that can hopefully be applied to many forms of unpaid (but enriching) labor.
To Save Twitter, We Must Seize Twitter
The first argument is blunt: Twitter, if it wants to continue existing, needs to be nationalized. Their business model isn’t panning out in terms of advertising revenue. Twitter, despite being incredibly useful in acting as–essentially–an AP wire service with racist trolls, is proving to not be a profitable enterprise from a free-market capitalist point of view. (Twitter corp health). It may well be the case that the market in social media is moving away from Twitter and its death is inevitable.
So Twitter may well end up becoming one of many future failures in the looming tech bubble, because–simply put–Twitter isn’t can’t turn a profit. Just like fire departments, digital infrastructure, and many other varieties of public programs. The point of this comparison is to demonstrate that the government, if acting in accordance with a society that has deemed a certain good or service necessary, will sometimes subsidize that good or service. Whether roads, schools, or (in more civilized nations, at least) healthcare, governments will provide goods and services at a “loss” simply on the principle that they are worthwhile things for us all to have.
We may be reaching a point in the lifespan of Twitter where it will become necessary to nationalize it if we want it to continue existing (admittedly, an open question, considering that Twitter is an open sewer grate). While it may seem counter-intuitive at first, the infrastructural equivalents of roads and telephone wires in the digital future may indeed be services that disseminate information quickly and efficiently–like Twitter.
Do You Own Your Twete, On Line? Or Are You Owned, On Line?
How much time do you think you’ve spent trying to craft a pefect tweet, shaving characters and finding ever more creative shorthands to cram your complex thought into the 140 character limit? If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent too much time doing this, perhaps even agonized daily over the incomplete manner in which you’ve just presented a thought or argument (Jesus Christ, I seriously hope that you’re not anything like me).
And I don’t even have more than 200 Twitter followers.
My point is that for folks who legitimately use Twitter as a publicity tool–or even those who attempt to advance a career through tweeting–must expend a great deal of time and effort on theirs, owing to the fact that their livelihood is tied into tweets, at least in some small fashion.
Hmm, I just used “time” and “effort” up there in reference to the act of Tweeting. And it’s easy to explain why: tweeting is mental labor. If tweeting is mental labor, tweets are the product of that mental labor; if tweets are the product that Twitter is selling to advertisers, then we are performing uncompensated labor for Twitter Inc. It’s a fairly simple concept, perhaps so rudimentary that drawing attention to it only draws quizzical stares and questions of efficacy.
“What, do you get .2 cents for every tweet view that leads to a link clickthrough? Do you get a stock dividend from Twitter based off of your percentage of the total amount of followers? How should this labor be compensated?”
My assertion would be that the labor should remain uncompensated, perhaps–but that the labor certainly should not be alienated from the unwashed tweeters, existing solely as corporate profit for Twitter Inc. Tying the disparate threads of this argument together, Twitter is a situation where nationalization would be the solution to the dual tracks presented: a government bailout and guarantee of continued existence for the public good in addition to an end to the essentially alienated, uncompensated labor that we perform, ostensibly for our own enjoyment but materially for Twitter Inc.’s profit.
While there is extenuating information, such as the relatively low clickthrough ratio for links posted on Twitter versus comparable services, it can reasonably be assumed by the fact that so many people use it thusly that Twitter is fast becoming both a necessary tool in media employment and a venue for entertainment itself.