The year Twitter died: a special series from The Verge %>

Twitter was so many things.

Elon Musk killed Twitter. First, he did it figuratively: firing most employees, destabilizing it as a technology and a business, leaving the platform virtually unusable for those who remained. Then, he killed it literally: renaming it X, giving Twitter a final ending after 15 years of chaotic existence. 

But in death, there is understanding — now that it’s over, we can reckon with what Twitter really was: a news cycle accelerator, a tool of mass harassment, an idealistic money-losing workplace, and an infinite joke machine.

2023 will go down as…

THE YEAR TWITTER DIED

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Extremely Softcore, by Zoë Schiffer The Great Scrollback of Alexandria
Goodbye to all that Harassment, by Sarah Jeong How Twitter Broke the News, by Nilay Patel
Editors Kevin Nguyen and Sarah Jeong
Senior creative director William Joel
Art direction and design Studio Elana Schlenker
Illustrators James Kerr, Erik Carter, Charles Desmarais, and Rui Pu
Engineer Graham MacAree
Editorial operations Kara Verlaney
Engagement editor Esther Cohen
Copy editors Liz Hickson and Adia Watts
Sound design Andrew Marino
Creative director Kristen Radtke
Fact-checker Becca Laurie
Editor-in-chief Nilay Patel
Publisher Helen Havlak