Ever since going public and having a peak stock price of $69 just 32 months ago in January of 2014, Twitter’s share price has been decreasing on a steady basis with a bleak outlook for the future. Twitter’s share price went into a free fall a couple times, in October of 2014 after a short spike, and then again in April of 2015. Since then, the Twitter stock price has been steadily declining.

Why has this been happening? Well, I would speculate it is most likely directly related to totalitarian leadership over at Twitter headquarters. For example, in April of 2015 Twitter started a crackdown on supposed “abuse”, creating stricter rules and a new filter.

See what The Guardian had to say about this for more details: Twitter announces crackdown on abuse with new filter and tighter rules. Now, take a look at the stock price that month immediately following these changes:

At beginning of the crackdown:

Immediately the Twitter stock price went into a freefall losing almost half its stock value within days!

It is clear that the falling stock price was a direct consequence of Twitter limiting its users.

Since then, Twitter has mercilessly limited accounts for “following too much”, added phone number requirements, and basically made it a pain in the you know what if you use twitter any real amount.

Add to that, that Twitter removed the share counts (we now use a third party to show our Twitter share counts), as well as Twitter demanding a phone number in order to continue using your account after the first time you get limited. If you don’t provide a phone number, you can’t use your Twitter account anymore.

Also keep in mind Twitter’s instant banning of many accounts, most of which were legitimate accounts. And keep in mind as well its limitations on freedom of speech by banning 125,000 users in one fell swoop to supposedly “prevent terrorism” – in reality, this was nothing but an impingement on freedom of speech.

So, is it any surprise that the Twitter share price is a fraction of what it was just a couple years ago, almost down to single digits? Today, the Twitter share price is down to $17, down from $35 last year and $67 the year before. At this rate Twitter’s share price will be in the single digits within a year from now.

So, was it worth it, Twitter? Rhetorical question of course. It wasn’t worth it for Twitter nor was it worth it for their users. Just like all the other Silicon Valley internet companies, their totalitarian policies and growing list of rules that make it harder and harder for users to use the site are destroying it.

That’s what happened to Facebook, and even though people still know what Facebook is, most people never use it anymore. That’s what happened to Yahoo and why they decided to close down their search engine (now the “Yahoo” search engine is just a licensed Bing search – Yahoo search no longer exists). That is what is happening to Google – more and more people are leaving Google as they keep destroying their products.

When are these billion dollar companies going to learn? How many billions will have to be lost before they wake up and start putting their users first? Will they ever? Well, based on past experience, I would venture to guess that no, they will never change, and as a result, once great and useful services will continuously have a very limited lifespan until they eventually hit the Silicon Valley graveyard where software goes to die, when people give up on the service and move on to the next thing.

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