by northeast
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, sees the inevitable.
If paying brands stay off the platform, denying what used to be Twitter the lifeline of advertising revenue, X is finished. Musk himself has admitted it. But no matter how risky the platform is for advertisers and no matter how degraded the experience is for users, X is still standing at the end of 2023.
For a handful of X alternatives, Musk’s recent mistakes were their opportunities. If this was the year of X’s tenure, this was a year of promotion for his replacements.
This summer, in a surprise launch, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (META) introduced its text-based Twitter rival, Threads. The app burst onto the scene just as Twitter made a mistake. Musk had imposed a poorly received update that temporarily limited the number of posts Twitter users could see in a day. Users lashed out at the restrictions, which amplified the turmoil that defined Musk’s acquisition.
Additional changes to the site, such as removing verification credentials for journalists and expanding posts by users who pay for premium services, worsened its public reputation after it was already damaged by chaotic mass layoffs and a valuation down.
Zuckerberg timed the arrival of Threads at the peak of Twitter disaffection. Within hours, the app gained at least 10 million registrations.
But while Threads has the backing and built-in user network of a tech giant with a market capitalization approaching $1 trillion, other microblogging platforms have garnered attention and attracted their own nascent user bases as well.
These alternatives are not presented as a direct replacement.
“There has to come a point where people realize that there will not be another Twitter,” said Noam Bardin, CEO and founder of Post, the new social platform, which has 550,000 registered users. While some new entrants are trying to recreate the idiosyncrasies behind the success of the old Twitter, Bardin said that kind of app cloning won’t work “if you’re just another Twitter without the content.”
The way Post differentiates itself is based in part on emphasizing news, something other players like Meta have downplayed, ceding ground to upstarts. The platform allows users to purchase individual articles from news providers and read media stories within the same interface.
Bardin points to the success of TikTok as a model for Post. Instead of trying to clone YouTube, TikTok leaned heavily on showing entertaining content that meets the tastes of its users without having to force them to find and follow other accounts or create a curated feed using social signals. The result was an endless stream of personalized clips for users. For Bardin, TikTok took a piece of the incumbent’s service and ran with it. That’s a path for Post, too.
Bardin also emphasized that Post’s business model of partnering with news outlets and publishers rather than relying on impression-based advertising revenue shapes incentives for the company in ways that don’t rely on the more toxic elements. of social networks, such as constant pressure to keep users psychologically trapped on the platform.
“We don’t need you to scroll for five hours,” he said. “We make the same money if you read three articles.”
Bluesky, which has 2.6 million users and remains invitation-only, claims its own niche. Its goal is to offer a more community-based and transparent alternative to X that is less susceptible to the control of a single entity.
Originally proposed as an initiative within Twitter to develop an open source social network, Bluesky is now its own public benefit company. While it looks like the old Twitter, the company has plans for a fully decentralized system that would allow the general public to run their own applications, using Bluesky as a kind of digital infrastructure. For now, the flagship Bluesky app is giving many former Twitter users a home for public conversation.
“The changes Twitter has gone through really inadvertently demonstrate why it’s important for us to exist,” said CEO Jay Graber.
“We’re actually trying to build something that’s resilient to a single person or a single company very dramatically changing the infrastructure by which people communicate.”
Then there’s Mastodon, an open source alternative to Twitter that was one of the first social networks to attract users fleeing Musk’s platform. While its monthly active users have faltered this year, efforts are being made to continue its initial momentum. A number of third-party clients have released polished apps that make using the service more intuitive.
I have hesitated to spend more time on other social networks even when I dabbled in them. At first, quitting X can be disorienting in the same way that starting a new video game or hobby can be. You don’t know what you’re doing. The screens look strange. When does it become fun? What is a plate?
It’s hard to get over that beginner feeling when . I know I’m hung up on X.
I lurk more on LinkedIn and Reddit, even when I have newer, more attractive alternatives in front of me.
As a friend recently texted me about Bluesky: “Come in here, the water is warm.”
Ryan Broderick, web culture writer and author of the Garbage Day newsletter, said we don’t have much historical precedent to think about the death of Twitter. But there are examples to take advantage of.
“The big question is what kind of crisis is X in right now?” she said, outlining three paths. The first is the one many people jump to immediately: Myspace, a complete shutdown. The second is something similar to what happened to YouTube during advertiser boycotts over brand safety. Eventually, advertisers returned and the platform recovered. The third case Broderick mentioned was Tumblr, which suffered a huge exodus of users but has continued with a shrinking user base.
X is likely to slowly advance and become smaller and dumber, Broderick said. “I don’t think X is going to disappear one day.”
That all depends on Musk and the directions set by X’s competitors. Zuckerberg, for his part, has big ambitions for Threads, even as the platform has downplayed news, a crucial element of the chaotic magic of old Twitter. During Meta’s most recent earnings call, Zuckerberg said Threads has nearly 100 million monthly active users. Reaching a 10-fold level is within reach in just a few years, he said. Last week Threads opened to users in the European Union.
In the days following the October 7 attack by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, At the same time, its limitations were laid bare: the amplification of attention-mongers, an avalanche of abusive and bigoted posts, and design choices that make it difficult for people to find trustworthy news sources. When the drama of current events draws audiences in, X becomes an irresistible destination. It’s also deeply flawed. That’s what makes the race to replace or avoid him both intriguing and implausible.
Broderick said he followed events on both Threads and X, and described the experience of being on Musk’s platform as exhausting and horrible without proper filtering. “But he had a better idea of the ticking of the conflict at X,” he said. “The machinery is still there. It’s still a pretty good application.”
Hamza Shaban is a Yahoo Finance reporter covering markets and the economy. Follow Hamza on Twitter @hshaban.
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