Twitter Doubles Down on Creators

0:00All right. So we are going to talk about how Twitter is doubling down on creator. So I just want to share a couple of examples and we'll jump into it. they're launching a lot of features. We're not here to talk about all the features. We're here more so to talk about the opportunity. And so Twitter, when Elon took over, they really tried to double down on subscriptions, which is Twitter Blue. And what they've added, just a couple examples here, you can actually write long form posts on Twitter now. I believe it's up to 10 ,000 words or something like that. And they're going to focus more on uploading videos directly to the platform helps with retention rates as well.

0:35So they're going to put more emphasis on that. But also, they've added the ability, if I want to subscribe to Neil, for example, I can subscribe to exclusive content that he's putting out and maybe Neil charges$5 to$10 a month. But they're adding something now where you can basically charge people to view per tweet. So it's like a pay per article type of deal. And I haven't seen a lot of that. I'm interested to see where that goes long term. But the fact of the matter is they're focusing a lot more on creators and they are just trying to figure out other ways to drive revenue. So we're here to talk about what we think about this and where we think Twitter is going to go.

1:09I think Twitter is going to go where the experiments tell them to. So they're running a lot of tests. They're taking a lot of concepts from a lot of different platforms, EX, Patreon, and start leveraging some of the other financial models. See if you can end up monetizing better for creators, because if you can monetize better for creators and give them incentives, what are they going to do? They're going to spend way more time on your platform, which is going to make it more popular and help Elon generate some of his investment back. But yeah, I look at Twitter as they're just going to run a ton of experiments.

1:43Like it's going to be a whole bag of tricks. They're going to whip them out and they're going to see which ones work and which ones don't. And I think that's smart, not because it's Elon. Of course, you know, he's done really well in life. But in business, a lot of times, none of us know the right answers. If you want to copy someone else, that's fine. but if you really want to do well, you got to be willing to test and experiment and try new things and be open to failing. Some things will work, some things won't. And what I think he's trying to make Twitter, and he didn't mention this in the past, is an end-all, be-all platform.

2:19I think it was like, was it WeChat or WePay or something like that where you can do transactions and you can do everything on Twitter. I don't know if it'll go down to that path, but what I do think he'll end up doing is figuring out how to make it more of a community. Before Elon, Twitter was just a place where you release some tweets. Every once in a while, you can do some videos that you push up, but it's more so a place to get information and converse with others. And what we found, at least in our industry, and it can vary in other industries, but in our industry, a lot of it is more intellectual, educational-based type content versus like, check out a picture of my family and I.

3:00And I'm not saying they're getting away from that. I think they still have that. But what they're also adding in is all the other aspects that make social communities popular. So that way they can get a bigger slice of the market. So Elon is trying to make Twitter into this super app to Neil's point could be like a WeChat or any of these other ones. WeChat is a good example, because you could shop on it, you can handle payments and all that. So So they've actually added the ability to trade crypto because they've synced with eToro. So they're going to continue to add these features. The marketing and business lesson here is that Elon is very receptive to criticism.

3:35He's very active on the app itself, and he's in the trenches. I remember seeing working late into the mornings with Twitter engineers, and he's constantly trying to figure out new ideas and new angles while open to being wrong. And so he might seem immature on Twitter at times, but at the end of the day, the guy's a great product guy and he will try to do what he can to make Twitter a place where people want to hang out more. I will say that I find that the discourse on Twitter is the most interesting in my opinion because I think the smartest people are hanging out on Twitter. I do not think the smartest people – here's the thing.

4:07When you look at Instagram, people are showing off. Oh my god, look at my vacation. Look at my nice car. Look at this. Look at that. It's not really educational. I don't feel like I'm getting much from it. In fact, it's more envy than anything if you're looking at like an Instagram, in my opinion. But when you look at a Twitter or Twitter, it's the best example because to go viral on Twitter, you have to really genuinely perform highly. Whereas if you want to go viral on LinkedIn, I'll give you an example. At the Mastermind last week, we're kind of just figuring out how we can. We're joking. Literally, I threw up a quote of Steve Jobs, a picture of him with his Mac, and that post got 900 likes.

4:39And so it's more of a joke to grow on LinkedIn right now than it is versus Twitter. and so I think there's more merit tied to it and I believe if they can lure more creators to post more frequently they're going to do a lot better and plus their creator incentives right now are really good where if Neil creates like a subscription or I create a subscription they're not going to take any money for a while too so that's pretty incentivizing anything else Neil there's a few things one thing to keep in mind is if you haven't seen the BBC interview of Elon you should check it out. He talks to the BBC interviewer about misinformation.

5:13The BBC interview says like, oh, there's a lot more hate on Twitter. And Elon asking for examples and the guy can't produce examples. And Elon's like, yeah, you're lying. And most people took that as like, oh, Elon just, you know, burn the BBC guy. I didn't look at it that way. And sure, you can, there's also that viewpoint, but I took at it as Elon was genuinely curious on what was the hate speech, because I believed when I was listening to it, he was like, Oh, cool, what is it? I want to know so I can try to solve it. And the second point is Mark Cuban recently tweeted out saying that his reach is isn't as good, or he's not getting as many likes or retweets or whatever you want to end up calling it.

5:56And Elon also stated somewhere forgot where I read this were like, yeah, the reach also isn't as good, digging into it and trying to figure out why. He's actually taking the criticism that people are giving to try to improve the platform. If someone said, hey, there's a ton of hate speech and you can show him and it's factual, it's not opinionated, I believe he would actually try to solve it. I think that's very unique with a lot of these social platforms. Most of them just try to do what is producing the most income. Yes, He is trying to monetize and figure out how to make more money from the platform other than just ads.

6:32But what's interesting is he's also a creator himself and a brand. So he's actually working on both aspects in which he still wants the brands to get the reach. He still wants them to use the platform because people see their content and engage with it, which is kind of interesting. If you look at most social platforms, they cramp down the reach so that way people have to spend money on advertising. Elon trying to figure out other unique ways to monetize and not cram down the reach. So that way people just have to be forced to advertise. I think they say that one in 12 experiments will succeed and they understand that.

7:07And so Elon himself has said, hey, look, and by the way, we don't want to make this like a celebratory Elon podcast. It's not about that. At the end of the day, it's about how can you iterate on your product? How can you I haven't seen a CEO out there openly participating in their product and asking for feedback and accepting that. And a lot of things haven't worked out, but some things have worked out. And the jury's out on the really big one where they cut 80 % of staff. That seems like it's working out so far. And that's a whole other podcast. But that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, rate, and subscribe.

7:35And we will see you later.