(2022-04-18) Thompson Back To The Future Of Twitter

Ben Thompson: Back to the Future of Twitter. What potential does Musk see, and could he unlock it? For my part, not only do I agree the potential is vast, but I do think Musk could unlock it. (Musk Buys Twitter)

what is Twitter: is it a website or an app, or something different?

Twitter is actually a host of microservices, including a user service (for listing a user’s timeline), a graph service (for tracking your network), a posting service (for posting new tweets), a profile service (for user profiles), a timeline service (for presenting your timeline), etc.;

the important takeaway is that the user-facing parts of Twitter are distinct from — and, frankly, not very pertinent to — the core Twitter service.

Twitter has, over 19 different funding rounds (including pre-IPO, IPO, and post-IPO), raised $4.4 billion in funding; meanwhile the company has lost a cumulative $861 million in its lifetime as a public company (i.e. excluding pre-IPO losses)

I have also made the argument that Twitter just isn’t well suited to direct response advertising in particular... Think about the contrast between Twitter and Instagram.

That article made the argument for Twitter to move towards more of a subscription offering; that may be the wrong idea, but the bigger takeaway is that what Twitter has been trying to build for years just isn’t working

What is valuable is that social graph: while Facebook understands who you know, Twitter, more than any other company, understands what its users are interested in (interest graph).

Twitter just doesn’t have that many users, relatively speaking; the users it has, though, are extremely influential, particularly given the important of Twitter in media, tech, and finance.

This, by extension, drives Twitter’s cultural impact

This is all build-up to my proposal for what Musk — or any other bidder for Twitter, for that matter — ought to do with a newly private Twitter.

start by splitting Twitter into two companies. One company would be the core Twitter service, including the social graph. The other company would be all of the Twitter apps and the advertising business. (Break Up)

TwitterAppCo would contract with TwitterServiceCo to continue to receive access to the Twitter service and social graph; currently Twitter earns around $13/user/year in advertising, so you could imagine a price of say $7.50/user/year

However, that relationship would not be exclusive: TwitterServiceCo would open up its API to any other company

each company would:
Pay for the right to get access to the Twitter service and social graph.
Monetize in whatever way they see fit (i.e. they could pursue a subscription model).
Implement their own moderation policy.

This last point would cut a whole host of Gordian Knots

increase in competition amongst Twitter client services

What is most exciting, though, is the potential development of new kinds of services that don’t look like Twitter at all.

what is missing is a notifications protocol

If you can know how to reach someone, and have the means to do so, you are set, whether you be a critical service, an advertiser, or anything in-between. Twitter has the potential to fill that role

A truly open TwitterServiceCo has the potential to be a new protocol for the Internet — the notifications and identity protocol. (As opposed to email or XMPP?)