I was fascinated by the clown car that crashed into a dumpster fire that Twitter has seen since Elon Musk’s takeover. While one of my character’s weaknesses was taking advantage of leadership meltdowns, there was a mixture of alarm since my genius engagement strategy was to rely heavily on Twitter. However, some of the more concerning developments have been the misinformation spread on Twitter (lol), and I see no immediate need for sweeping changes on my part.
(Note: Anyone interested in technical discussions can disregard this post. It just explains my thoughts on delivering my content.)
At this point, Twitter was burdened with $1 billion a year debt servicing and reportedly lost many major advertising accounts. I find it unlikely to reverse anytime soon, and therefore Twitter will be a liquidity black hole. However, my guess is that Musk and/or deep-pocketed backers will be pouring money into this black hole for at least a little while, barring other major developments (which may happen). My reasoning is to look at Musk’s history – his companies relied on government subsidies. It’s pretty clear that there are at least some governments that might be willing to pump a few billion into Twitter.
A mass exodus of “norms” from Twitter is possible and would occur if some of Musk’s earlier thoughts were implemented. But unless my experience on their site is too miserable and/or there is reputational risk associated with the site, I won’t be making any major changes to my “social media strategy”. (which is a serious description of retweeting pictures of cats and ranting about stupid things written by Larry Summers).
My previous strategy
I distribute free content on the internet to advertise my books and circulate drafts for feedback (participatory technical editing). A tertiary goal is that I can also talk about economics and finance – although these diatribes do not help me sell my books. I also use different types of social media to get lists of things to read and write.
I’ve pushed my short-form content (rants) and curation feature extensively to Twitter. It worked well and I also used Twitter to follow non-economic news. As long as you use the timeline – i.e. no algorithmic garbage being pushed into my timeline – and aggressive unfollowing/muting/blocking, Twitter is extremely useful for getting good information on topics of niche on the same platform. As long as nothing interferes with this function, I can mostly stick to what I’m doing.
However, I may need to reduce my addiction to Twitter. As such, I might turn to posting shorter content on my sub-stack and blog. Rather than cluttering up people’s emails, I could limit random rants on the blog. I also need to react more to the business blogosphere in my writing on the website, which I had done extensively on Twitter.
Although there has been a lot of talk about econ twitter migrating elsewhere, I will be a late adopter. I will be able to see where the traffic is coming from, and thus know where to put the efforts if necessary.
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