The major social media companies have basically been providing the same, largely unchanging product, for the last decade. Yes—they are doing it very well, managing to scale number of users and amounts of activity, and optimising the various conflicting factors around usability, advertising, etc. But, basically, Twitter has been doing the same schtick for the last decade. Yet, if media and government were looking to talk to an innovative, forward-looking company, they might well still turn to such companies.
By contrast, universities, where there is an enormous, rolling programme of change and updating, keeping up with research, innovating in teaching, all in the context of a regulatory and compliance regime that would be seen as mightily fuckoffworthy if imposed on such companies, are portrayed as the lumbering, conservative forces. Why is this? How have the social media companies managed to convey that impression—and how have we in higher education failed?