Twitter and Purpose

People seem to be of many minds when it comes to the 'purpose' of social media. I say purpose in quotes because I don't mean the purpose of social media companies, I mean the purpose of the platforms themselves. Like all companies, Twitter and Facebook and all the rest exist primarily to make money, that purpose is about as clear as it gets. But the purpose of the platform Twitter is a lot more murky. Is it a recreational activity? A place to promote goods and services? A networking tool? Different people have different ideas of what it's truly meant to be and when those ideas conflict, things don't always go smoothly.

The concept of professionalism on social media is both loved and reviled. People are mocked for being too formal, but also mocked for being too casual in certain circumstances. I get it, it's jarring to see a respected professional say the fuck-word on Twitter and it's weird when some random person runs their account like they're holding court. Fundamentally it's a conflict of purpose. If you think social media is for fun self expression, you won't like it when someone refuses to open up in the slightest. If you think it's for promoting yourself in a professional way, you won't like very unprofessional behavior. There are social media platforms like LinkedIn that make their purpose very clear, but platforms like Twitter take a more Swiss army knife approach. Twitter is for whatever you want to use it for, which means that very different people are always going to come into conflict with each other.