He killed something beautiful

You know how when you push down on your feed, it refreshes? Twitter's design team invented that feature. They invented it; something so ubiquitous and elegant you don't even think about it.

Twitter was one of the first social media companies to brand user interactions within the platform— tweets, retweets, hashtags— that was all Twitter's wildly inventive dev team.

Twitter's user interface is so incredibly well-structured, with such a strong design language, that it feels as natural as the multi-touch screen it lives in. Companies, to this day, shamelessly copy everything Twitter does.

When mobile websites started gaining popularity in the early 2010s, Twitter released Bootstrap, one of the first responsive front-end frameworks, for free. Today, millions of websites are built on Bootstrap because how well structured it is. I learned how to code using Bootstrap and I still use it often.

Twitter has one of the best logos ever created. It’s iconic in its simplicity and thoughtfulness. It was one of the first to consider mobile interfaces, designed to be recognizable no matter the size.

All this to say, to watch the brand fall victim to the antithesis of good design is gut-wrenching. I can't think of a worse death for the bird app. Elon bought something beautiful, and his instinct was to destroy it. It almost feels as if he's punishing it for achieving something he could never have achieved on his own— good taste and measured execution. You wonder if the only reason he hasn't destroyed Tesla is because he has shareholders to tell him no.

I want Twitter to die. Not because of what it was, but because of what it has turned into. Twitter deserved a dignified death. Elon denied it that. He snuffed it out in the ugliest way possible.