Twitter Redux?

Maybe Twitter is going to have their moment again.

There’s been recent talk about Twitter $TWTR stock lately in investing circles. There was a time when Twitter was the king of the smart guy social networks, mostly for link sharing. Then it got polluted and confused.

Despite their diffused management over the years they are still standing as something that has yet to be replaced or reduced. Other platforms have emerged for short videos and for whatever SNAP $SNAP is but so far Twitter stands alone in their category.

Recently they have had some decent success with new products - notably Twitter Spaces which is their version of Clubhouse and the Revue newsletter which was an acquisition that most people felt would disappear into the corporate maw.

But today I see more usage of both Spaces and “Newsletter” by reasonable people. Some will see Spaces as a “Clubhouse killer” and Newsletter as a “Substack killer” but that’s not really the point. FWIW I find the feel and vibe of both Clubhouse and Substack to be quite different than the Twitter offerings but YMMV.

Facebook (META) is placing a big bet on the Metaverse which takes them on a path that seems further away from competing with Twitter.

Despite the plethora of content platforms - WordPress, Ghost, Substack, LinkedIn, Medium, and proprietary platforms like Seeking Alpha - authors come back to Twitter for sharing.

Many authors also have yet more platforms for podcasting and webinars, still others use community tools like WhatsApp or Discord in conjunction with their written product.

But everyone still uses Twitter for the sharing piece. It can be said that it’s the “low level denominator” but what if they do a credible job of offering some of these services directly on their platform?

I wouldn’t rush to change our existing tech stack but it’s not impossible to imagine have a Twitter-hosted newsletter with free and paid tiers with related Twitter Spaces sessions. That’s enough to start a business. If they continue to invest then their platform could become more viable for businesses and “serious” authors.