Twitter was a social accomplishment, not a technical one. It created its own new word (to tweet) and it did really feel, misleadingly, like a public utility rather than a private platform.

It’s also completely unreplicable today. There was a fun factor to it that justified starting out at zero followers—it was a game, so it was OK to start out at level 1–that isn’t there on any of the replacements. “Platform” has become some new kind of social credit score and no one enjoys it anymore. We either become “content creators” and get into that grind or remain obscure and hope our employers never bother to deanonymize us.