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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon Releases The Twitter Files, OpenAI Debuts ChatGPT

Happy First Monday of December, y’all! Hope you are having a wonderful week so far.  I know a lot of you are knee-deep in Holiday planning, as well as budgeting for 2023 at work, and all the personal and professional craziness that comes at the end of the year. Just remember not to overextend yourself, and take some time to relax and enjoy the season.  Here’s a couple of news stories that caught my eye over the last week.

 

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter continues to be a massive story. One of the constant complaints about Twitter for several years now has been questionable content moderation choices made at the company.  Certain stories seemed to be censored, or users expressing a certain opinion or political slant seemed to be suspended at an unusually high rate. Well Elon has promised to share the internal communications around some of these controversial moves, and that started last Saturday with the first release of what Elon is calling The Twitter Files.  The first installment dealt with Twitter’s decision to suppress the story involving Hunter Biden’s laptop.  You can click the tweet below and read the entire thread if you are interested.

Elon has said this will be the first of multiple dumps around particular topics.  He’s suggested that the next installment of The Twitter Files will drop either today or tomorrow, and concern events that happened immediately after the 2020 Presidential election.

Regardless of your take on the politics involved, this story is a huge deal for the entire social media industry. What Elon is doing is taking transparency to a new level, and it will put a ton of pressure on other social media sites to match his efforts to fully disclose how each site tackles content moderation and user privacy. I also believe that Elon’s moves now are positioning Twitter to become the dominant social media platform in the world, within the next 5 years. We’ll see if he can keep the momentum going.

 

Artificial Intelligence is a fascinating and evolving area of technology that deserves your attention. To that end, OpenAI just launched a chat bot/tool called ChatGPT.  You can sign up for a free account with OpenAI and test out ChatGPT for yourself, and I would advise you to do so at this link:

Some people are calling ChatGPT a ‘Google killer’.  The reason for the excitement is that AI like ChatGPT allows you to have a conversation with an information source, something you cannot do with a search engine. You can ask ChatGPT questions and it will answer in an attempted conversational tone.  Also, ChatGPT has a ‘memory’, so it can build off of your previous questions and adjust answers given as you change the question.

To give you a sense of what it can do, I asked ChatGPT to tell me what I should tell you about Artificial Intelligence:

Now this type of AI brings up some obvious ethical considerations, especially for writers.  With some simple back and forth, I got ChatGPT to write entire blog posts for me, in seconds.  I could get it to write a scene from a book, I just need to give some simple parameters on what information to include, and ChatGPT does the rest to fill in the blanks.  For instance I asked ChatGPT to write the opening scene of a murder mystery involving a tour bus that breaks down in front of a deserted mansion, and within seconds, ChatGPT gave me the scene.  And it was actually really good!

So definitely sign up for a free OpenAI account and play with ChatGPT.  Whether you love it or become bored with it immediately, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with where the technology of AI is headed.

 

So that’s all for this week, I only included two stories, but I think both stories are important and deserve you spending some time checking into them, so I wanted to stop at two.  Plus I couldn’t find a third story I wanted to include so there’s that.  I hope you have an amazingly productive week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Layoffs Come to Meta and Twitter, Selling NFTs Comes to Instagram, Fans Get Paid Via Music NFTs

Happy Monday, y’all!  So yesterday many of us woke up to the cold realization that we still had to go through Daylight Savings Time this year.  I thought they ended this nonsense?!?  Apparently this is the last year we have to deal with pitch black darkness at 4:30 pm.

So here’s three marketing/business/web3 stories I saw this last week that I wanted to highlight. It comes with the caveat that I could have easily made this edition of MMM all about Twitter, once again.  Elon is making moves fast and furiously. and Twitter is kinda dominating the news cycle for business and tech right now. Twitter isn’t the only game in town right now, but it’s the MVP.  So I will try to balance between covering the highlights, while also covering other interesting marketing/business/web3 stories I come across.

If you want to see more of my content around Twitter’s moves, you can always follow me on Twitter. I’l continue to offer my opinions there on Elon’s latest moves.

With that said, let’s dive in:

 

So both Twitter and Meta/Facebook just announced big layoffs. To be sure, the economy is playing a role in both these moves. And unfortunately, we will probably see more layoffs hitting all industries, but especially the tech/social media space.

I believe the Twitter layoffs are also motivated at least in part by Elon’s desire to restructure Twitter. I think he wants Twitter to be the trusted ‘Town Square’ for the world, a place where people can come and get accurate information about what’s happening in the world, then discuss. A lofty goal, which requires addressing a content moderation team that, under Jack, was frequently criticized for suspending and censoring users based on simply disagreeing with their opinions.

Regardless, job cutting is an unfortunate reality of doing business in a weak economy, so we could very well see more such moves in the coming weeks and months.

 

Instagram has begun rolling out the ability to mint and sell NFTs to some US creators. Additionally, there will be no service or gas fees for either the creator or collector. This moves essentially makes Instagram an NFT marketplace, and creates direct competition for current NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea and Rarible.

 

Admittedly, this story isn’t a huge deal short-term, but I wanted to highlight it as a signal for where revenue sharing via NFTs is headed for the music industry. If you’ve read this blog, you know I am super bullish on music NFTs. With music NFTs, artists have the ability to sell or give an NFT to fans, that can guarantee the owner a share of the streaming royalties for that song or album.  For life.  Music NFTs give fans the ability to literally own the songs of their favorite artists. Once we start to see artists leveraging music NFTs to grow their fanbase and take it to the next level, then the sky is the limit for the technology. So I think it’s important to highlight and celebrate the smaller milestones now, that will lead to the massive ones tomorrow.  Just think, in 5 years time, every digital album you buy from your favorite artist could include a partial ownership in the lifetime streaming revenues that the album generates.

 

So that’s it for this Monday’s edition of the Marketing Minute. I hope you have a wonderfully productive week, I may have another post on Weds with more news on Twitter, I honestly haven’t decided yet. Either way, I will definitely be on Twitter, so find me there, and have a great week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: It’s Official; Elon Musk Owns Twitter

Happy Monday, y’all! So in this week’s Monday’s Marketing Minute, I wanted to focus on one story, Elon buying Twitter. The deal finally went through, and now we wait to see what the repercussions will be.

Elon hit the ground running:

And almost immediately, he started making staff changes:

Then he started addressing user concerns:

Elon also clarified that he’s investigating the possibility of extending how many characters a tweet can be and increasing the length of videos that can be shared. The verification process will also be revamped, and likely tied to Twitter Blue subscriptions in the future.

How Will Twitter Be Different Under Elon?

Probably the biggest change users will notice immediately will center on content moderation. I’m already seeing users claim they are suddenly gaining followers and are no longer shadow or search-banned. I’ll be paying a much closer eye on my Twitter stats for a while, but so far I haven’t seen an unusual changes.

Elon will be extremely transparent, maybe sometimes even TOO transparent. He’s already been tweeting details from internal meetings at Twitter along with details from ongoing court cases with the company. It does make for VERY interesting content, and Elon knows that.

Additionally, Elon is a pretty shrewd businessman, so he has a lot of ideas for how Twitter can increase revenue and change the user experience. So we will no doubt see a lot of tinkering with the UX and functionality over the coming weeks and likely months.

For the most part, I am liking what I am hearing from Elon so far. Like me, Elon has always been very concerned about the heavy-handed content moderation that happened under previous Twitter leadership. The content moderation efforts always felt like they were born out of activism rather than trying to improve the user experience, which should be the ultimate goal.

Not all of Elon’s ideas sound great at first blush. It seems he wants to change the verification process and tie verification to having a Twitter Blue subscription. Which I think will ultimately cause more problems than it solves, but we’ll see.

Overall, this is the most excitement I’ve seen around Twitter in years. I’m already seeing friends that haven’t been on Twitter in years returning, so I’m curious to see what Twitter under Elon looks like. I will say this: It will be interesting to see how many of Elon’s ideas that have been floated so far actually come to be. Elon hasn’t been shy about sharing his suggestions for improving or changing Twitter. But once he spends some time with the company and has a better handle on its structure, he may find out that some of those initial ideas aren’t feasible. Or he may discover some new ideas that weren’t apparent from the outside.

Either way, Twitter will be interesting again. And it’s been WAY too long since I could say that!

 

See you next Monday, y’all have a great week!

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Twitter Doesn’t Have a User Problem, it Has a Culture Problem

Some interesting internal documents have surfaced recently from Twitter that give some very interesting, and concerning, glimpses into the workings of the company.

First, there’s this story about how ‘heavy tweeters’ are leaving Twitter:

What I found really interesting about this article was that Twitter classifies its heaviest users as being users who only tweet 3-4 times a day and check in on the site 6 times a week.  The irony is, I do that now, and my posting volume is waaaaaay down.  For years I tracked my daily activity on Twitter, and tried my best to hit at least 100 tweets a day. During Sundays and #Blogchat, it was not uncommon for me to send 200-300 tweets a week.  I would love to see how Twitter calculated its heaviest users in say 2012, as I bet it required those users to have far more than 3-4 tweets per day.  I would suspect 30-40 tweets per day being more likely.

That article speaks to activity on the platform among the site’s heaviest users.  But another internal document speak to its culture. And it’s not impressive. Twitter’s employees wrote a letter to Elon Musk, making a list of demands of Twitter’s likely future owner:

First, the idea of employees giving their new boss a list of demands just screams entitlement and also a lack of experience working in the ‘real world’.

But this passage in the letter really speaks to the culture at Twitter now:

Elon Musk’s plan to lay off 75% of Twitter workers will hurt Twitter’s ability to serve the public conversation. A threat of this magnitude is reckless, undermines our users’ and customers’ trust in our platform, and is a transparent act of worker intimidation.

Twitter has significant effects on societies and communities across the globe. As we speak, Twitter is helping to uplift independent journalism in Ukraine and Iran, as well as powering social movements around the world.

The fact that Twitter workers believe the site exists to ‘serve’ the public conversation instead of HOSTING the public conversation is telling. Twitter is a platform, which means its job legally under Second 230 protections of the CDA is to host content from its users.  The statement from Twitter’s workers makes it clear that the workers view the site as a publisher.  The statement about ‘uplifting’ independent journalists and ‘power social movements’ may sound noble, but that’s not Twitter’s job as a platform.

A platform hosts content.  A publisher edits content.  The statement from Twitter’s workers make it clear that they are curating/editing content, and they are proud of that fact.

This is why politicians have been pushing for Section 230 protections to be changed or revoked for social media sites.  In short, Section 230 says that social media sites, even blogs like this one, are platforms. That means the blogger or site owner has limited responsibility for any content left by a user.  If someone leaves a comment on this blog, the responsibility for that comment falls on the person who left the comment, not the blogger (me).  But that protection is only afforded because Section 230 says this blog is a platform.

The issue with Twitter and certain other social media sites is they have been leveraging Section 230 protections as a platform, but they have been editing and curating content on the platform, as if they were a publisher.  These sites are basically misusing Section 230 protections, and it’s why politicians in recent years on BOTH sides of the isle have threatened to repeal those protections.

Which would crush smaller content creators. It would mean blogs like this one would be almost forced to turn off comments, because the responsibility for those comments would shift from the commenter, back to the blogger.

Twitter’s internal letter to Elon Musk makes it clear that the content moderation team is run by activists rather than employees working for a platform. And Elon has long made comments about how ham-fisted Twitter’s content moderation is, so it will be interesting to see what changes are made, if Elon does take over.

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What Kanye West’s Parler Acquisition Signals About What’s Coming With Web 3.0

So let’s look at three stories and see if we can spot a trend:

What’s the trend? I think this is the start of people who have built successful brands either acquiring or creating new social media platforms. The Dorsey Bluesky Social news is breaking and to be honest, it’s a bit different from the Parler and Truth Social news, but I think it offers a nice bridge to what this could mean for Web 3.0.

Will any of these efforts be successful?  I have my doubts.  I tried Parler for a few months in 2021, and I just didn’t like it.  It was far too focused on politics, and too much politics is….too much politics.  I’ve been checking out Truth Social for a few months and while it is growing rapidly, content-wise it seems to be headed down the same path Parler did.  Kayne’s brand will spark new interest in Parler just like Trump’s brand is pushing a lot of people to Truth Social.

The Bluesky Social news is slightly different.  Dorsey clearly doesn’t have the personal brand that Ye or Trump have, but Bluesky is promising to be a decentralized platform that’s more Web 3.0 native in functionality and structure. Plus, if it positions itself as being ‘the web3 version of Twitter’, that will attract a lot of people. On the other hand, those of us who didn’t completely trust Dorsey while he was running Twitter probably won’t completely trust him running the potential web3 version of Twitter.

Still, I believe influencers creating platforms to connect with fans and around topics they want to focus on is something we will see more of in web3. I think it will be a transition, I could see Web 2.0 influencers who already have a built audience being first.  Maybe someone like a Mr. Beast could have his own platform devoted to videos.  Then over time, as the crop of web3 influencers emerge, they would have similar offerings associated with their brands.  For example, I could see a @Coopahtroopa having a web3 platform devoted to web3 music.

Should Web3 Money Flow to Influencers or Topics?

This is where the rubber will meet the road in web3.  I believe there is enormous potential for web3 to create decentralized communities that are organized around a niche focus.  This could be an influencer creating a web3 platform for their fans so they can connect with them around topics the influencer enjoys. I think this is where a lot of money will flow once this ball gets rolling.

But I think the TRUE value for all of us will be in decentralized web3 communities that are driven and curated by the community itself. These communities would form around an idea, a topic, a vision.  Something that like-minded people are passionate about, and can find value in connect with other people that share the same excitement.  It could something as simple as a platform for Cleveland Browns fans to connect. Or it could be ham radio enthusiasts, or people dealing with chronic health issues who need a community for information and support.

These type of communities will be different from Web 2.0 counterparts, because the participants will have more ways to contribute and create value. For instance, a person who spends 4 hours a day on a platform connecting with people who are dealing with the same chronic illness has created value for the community. That value could be compensated in the form of tokens or something similar, which that person could either use as a form of personal income, or they could pool back into the community. Tokens could be pooled back into the community to crowd-fund initiatives that benefit the entire community. Maybe the community chips in and purchases a day of time with a medical expert to speak to the community and give customized advice to participants.  The possibilities are endless.

Growing Slow Sometimes Beats Growing Fast

I talked a couple of weeks ago about how a community cannot go mainstream. The underlying message in that post was that as a community grows, it will eventually reach a point where the overall experience of the community begins to degrade. The community managers and the community itself needs to be aware of when this point is reached, and dial it back. If growth continues past that point, the community experience will continue to degrade and eventually the community could shatter.

When you add in the desire by a community to monetize its efforts, that can push for growth that may not be sustainable. It’s totally a balancing act and it will require smart managers who are rooted in their communities and have a deep understanding and appreciation of what the group is and wants to be.

The concept of what an online community is or could be will grow and evolve over the next few years as web3 technologies begin to take hold. I think you will see online communities that look different from Web 2.0 counterparts. I think you will see different structures, and you will see more integration with the offline world.  The connections and value created online won’t be locked there, they will float and merge with the offline world.

It will be exciting to watch, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Kayne Buys Parler, Marketers Move to Metaverse, Edit Button Isn’t Helping Twitter

Happy Monday, y’all! We are smack dab in the middle of Fall now and I love it!  Here’s three business/marketing/web 3 stories I enjoyed to get your week started off right!

 

Kayne is buying Parler. Parler is the social media app that rose to prominence in 2021 as backlash fueled over conservative voices on Twitter being banned.  Many of these users moved to Parler, but the site never seemed to get its footing. Well now Kayne has decided to buy the site and give it the Ye treatment. We’ll see how that works out, I will have more on this story in Wednesday’s post.

 

Marketers are ready to give the Metaverse a go. Check out the article as there are a lot of juicy nuggets about how marketers view the social media and digital landscape heading into 2023.

 

Apparently, the rollout of Twitter’s edit function has not given the surge in Blue signups that many expected. Maybe I’m being petty, but that gives me some satisfaction.  Since its inception, Twitter users have been begging for an edit button.  The constant complaints were all but ignored, and many with coding knowledge have long said adding editing ability would have been an easy fix.  It just never seemed to be a priority for Twitter to give the most requested feature to its users.

So when Twitter finally rolls out editing, it is part of Blue, meaning you have to PAY to get the feature.  Such a dumb move on multiple levels.  First, it honked off the userbase who has been begging for the feature for over a decade, then those users are forced to pay to get it.  The smarter play would have been to roll out editing to ALL users, but with limited functionality.  Then after everyone starts using and loving the feature, later roll it out to Blue users with additional functionality that would actually drive revenue.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute.  As I said earlier, I’ll have more thoughts on the Kayne Parler acquisition on Weds,  I think this move signals one of the defining trends we will see in web3, and I think it will be a good thing.  Hope you have a wonderful week, if you are traveling, stay safe and have fun!

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The Creator Economy Will Not Make You Rich

You will hear the term Creator Economy a lot over the coming years. It’s closely attached to the web3 or Web 3.0 movement, and promises that content creators will have never before seen ways to monetize their content. The story goes that you will see content creators be able to tokenize their content, turn it into NFTs, and create vibrant communities of fans who will happily support creators and even give them the chance to become rich. All off creating content regularly.

But the reality is, it’s not gonna happen.

And I say that as a person who has been getting paid to create content since 2006. I was the first person to successfully monetize a Twitter chat, I believe I was also the first person to get sponsors for a live version of a Twitter chat, when Dell sponsored a Live version of #Blogchat at South By Southwest in 2011. There were some years when content creation was my main source of income, yet there’s also been a year or two where it barely made me a penny.

It’s very difficult to make a good living just from content creation.  A new survey from influencer marketing platform Aspire backs this up:

And let’s be honest: In some areas of the country, $100,000 a year is not much.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from being a content creator. I just want you to go into your efforts with both eyes open. View your entry into the creator economy as one where you have multiple revenue streams. Content creation could be one stream. Another could be selling courses or consulting services based around the type of content you create. But unless you are the next Mr Beast or NICKMERCS, content creation alone will not make you rich.

Sidenote:  If you’ve read this blog or followed me on Twitter for any amount of time, you know I’m a huge fanboy for the #MFAM community that NICKMERCS has created. I love this tweet Nick reshared a couple of years ago from his excitement in 2014 for hitting 170 viewers of his Twitch stream:

Today, it’s not uncommon for Nick’s streams to have 500k up to a million or more views. Today, Nick is one of the most successful content creators on the planet. Which ties into another point: Even if you do make big money from content creation, it will take time and consistency. Learn to #RespectTheGrind.

 

The Creator Economy Won’t Make You Rich, But It Might Make You Enemies

The creator economy will get more people in the coming years. Since 2020, we have seen a shift to working from home. The creator economy has been an offshoot of this, and will continue to progress.

As it does, many content creators WILL figure out ways to monetize their efforts. As this happens, we will see some silliness and jealousy enter the conversation.

I’ve never told this story before. I started taking on social media content and consulting clients in 2006. In 2011, I started talking to publishers about writing a book that would later become Think Like a Rock Star. In early 2012, I got a deal signed with McGraw-Hill to publish TLAR.  At the time, I was coming off 2011, which had been my best year so far working for myself. I didn’t make a ton of money, but I felt like I had turned a corner, plus I saw the book deal as being my way to take my career to the next level. So when I signed the book deal in early 2012, I decided not to take on ANY new client work for 6 months, so I could focus all my attention on writing TLAR.

In hindsight, this might not have been the best choice, but at the time it made sense to me, so I stand by the decision. I got to work on writing TLAR, and a few weeks later, I announced here, and on social media that the book would be out early the following year.

The reaction was overwhelmingly positive and supportive. However, there was some criticism. A few people left snarky comments here and elsewhere saying I wasn’t qualified to write a book. Or that my book was unnecessary. One person even seemed to imply I had stolen the idea for my book from another author’s book (which I had never read).

I’ll never forget, there was one guy who worked for a major brand who occasionally left snarky comments towards me and other social media consultants. When I announced my book, he went to Twitter and told his followers NOT to buy my book, that I wasn’t qualified cause I didn’t work for a company like he did. I had to laugh cause I’m thinking ‘Dude you are likely making double if not triple what I am right now, and you’re jealous of my book deal’.

So as some content creators find new ways to monetize their efforts, look for the same controversy to follow.  I’m already seeing this happening in some circles where you have a group of content creators who are covering breaking news stories, but suddenly one girl has found a way to successfully monetize her efforts. Now the community she was a part of is calling her a ‘shill’ or that she shouldn’t be monetizing her efforts, she’s a ‘sellout’ etc. I saw the same things when Web 2.0 got off the ground, the same silliness will repeat during Web 3.0.

The Creator Economy Is a Piece of the Pie, it Ain’t the Whole Pie

The odds are, you won’t make a lot of money from creating content. You may not directly make a single dime off it. So manage your expectations when it comes to monetizing the content you create. Don’t think of it as a way to pay the bills, but maybe as a way to HELP you pay the bills. You can have other revenue streams, and many of those can develop as an offshoot of your content creation efforts.

Employers, you have to understand that your employees will be drawn to the freedom that the creator economy offers. It’s enticing to think about working from home, for yourself, doing much of the same work that they are currently doing in a cubicle for you. If you want to keep your best employees, you have to think about how to more creatively compensate and reward them for their efforts. Maybe you give them a bigger salary, or maybe more flexibility in work requirements. Appreciating your employees helps build trust and loyalty.

 

The creator economy will be a driving force in the coming years. It may not mint a million new millionaires, but it will give a lot of people the ability and freedom to pursue a new career path working for themselves. I’m excited to see where it takes us all!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Twitter Purchase Back On (For Now), Paypal Backlash, Facebook Dumping Newsletters

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you had a wonderful weekend, and are tanned, rested and ready to have an amazing week!  Here’s three marketing/business/web3 stories that caught my eye:

 

It looks like Elon’s on-again/off-again purchase of Twitter is back ON. The case that Twitter filed against Elon to force the sale has been put on hold by judge’s order till October 28th so the sides can close the deal. Initial media reports when this story broke said that the deal could be closed as early as today, so we will see what happens.

This deal has always gotten a lot of attention due to Elon’s constant complaints about Twitter’s ham-fisted content moderation efforts, and how things would change if he took control. While changes in this area are needed, it’s worth remembering that Elon has long maintained that Twitter has many untapped revenue streams available. So an Elon acquisition of Twitter should bring a LOT of changes across the board for users. Hopefully we will have some finality soon on if this deal actually happens.

 

 

So PayPal recently updated its user agreement, and very quietly slipped in a clause that said, more or less, if you post something online that PayPal doesn’t like, it can pull up to $2,500 from your account. As expected, once this clause was found, it created a massive uproar on social media, and many users began cancelling their PayPal accounts.  PayPal quickly reversed course, claiming the policy addition was an error. Social media, for all its faults, does still give us a way to hold companies accountable for bad decisions in near real-time.

 

Facebook is abandoning its move into integrated newsletters.  Last year, Twitter acquired Revue, and Facebook launched Bulletin as newsletter sites like SubStack were taking off. Well Facebook has now tapped out and will be pulling the plug on Bulletin in early 2023. The lesson, once again, is to think carefully before you plant deep roots on social media sites that you don’t own.

 

So that’s it for this week, I am now going back on Elon-watch to see when the Twitter deal completes. Feel free to join me, or check out my post on why A Community Cannot Go Mainstream from last week. It’s on pace to be my most popular post in 2022.

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A Community Cannot Go Mainstream

For the last couple of weeks, I have been beta-testing the Farcaster mobile app on my iPhone. Farcaster describes itself as ‘a sufficiently decentralized social network’.  I call it a sort of web3 hybrid of Twitter and Facebook.  Right now the app is in closed invite-only beta, and founder Dan Romero claims it has about a thousand active users.

So far, I absolutely love it.  The userbase is very techy and some of the stuff (ok a LOT of the stuff) is over my head, but I am loving the vibe of Farcaster.  Here’s what I am seeing there from the users:

  • Almost no self-promotion
  • No politics
  • No arguing
  • A lot of questions being asked that lead to organic conversations

What I am seeing on Farcaster right now reminds me a lot of how Twitter was in 2008/2009.

And that’s the problem.

Two of the overarching themes on Farcaster are:

1 – Wow I love the experience here versus Twitter!

2 – What are the plans to ensure that we keep this same experience as the userbase grows?

 

To his credit, Dan has thought about this a lot, and has a plan in place to protect the community on Farcaster, while growing.

But history has shown us that it won’t work. A community cannot go mainstream. A community can only scale so far before it snaps. And that breaking point typically arrives long before it achieves mainstream appeal.

What is a Community?

For the purposes of this post, let’s define a community.  A community is a group of like-minded individuals who have a shared sense of ownership in something larger than themselves.

Let’s go back to my early Twitter experience. It greatly mirrored what I am seeing now on Farcaster.  A lot of organic conversations.  It was quite easy to ask a simple question on Twitter in those early days and get sucked into an hour-long discussion. And make 10 new connections in the process.

There was no politics, no fighting, no broadcasting, no self-promotion.

Ironically, we all looked forward to the day when Twitter would go mainstream. Our reasoning was when EVERYONE knew what Twitter was, it would be even better!

Then it happened…

A Community Cannot Go Mainstream

I was driving down the highway in rural Alabama, I believe in 2009, when I saw this billboard.  I had to pull over and take a picture (and immediately post to Twitter). I immediately knew that Twitter was about to go mainstream.

And I was right.  Ashton Kutcher’s campaign to get Twitter followers opened the floodgates for other celebrities like Oprah, Britney Spears and the Kardashians to join Twitter. When celebs started flocking to the bird app, journalists were right behind them.

Overnight, Twitter went from our cozy bird app with around a million users in March of 2008, to having over 100 Million users in 2011.

And almost just as quickly, the experience on Twitter completely changed.  It seems celebs like to talk about themselves.  And it seems the media that followed them to Twitter wanted to talk about them.

Meanwhile, those of us who were enjoying our organic conversations and lack of self-promotion or fighting, suddenly felt like some fat, smelly guy had just cannonballed, uninvited, into our quiet and peaceful pool.  Now we were all soaked, and ready to leave.

Be Careful What You Wish For…

But the thing is, we had wanted this.  At least we thought we did. We wanted Twitter to go mainstream.  We wanted to see everyone enjoying the bird app and its community as we did.

Yet we didn’t think about how new people joining Twitter would fundamentally change the experience on Twitter.

And it totally did. Organic conversations gave way to ‘broadcasting’ from ‘thought leaders’. Or if an organic conversation did get off the ground, it was quickly sabotaged by a troll, who had likely joined Twitter sometime after Oprah did.

Why did this happen? Because the new users that Twitter rapidly picked up hadn’t help build the community that had been there since 2006/2007. They didn’t have that vested interest in growing and sustaining something that they hadn’t help build. They came to Twitter completely detached from the current users, so they wanted to use the bird app in their own way.

So Twitter went mainstream, but that small community of a million or so users from 2008 did not.  If Farcaster goes mainstream in a few years, the small community of users it has now will not.  It’s just the nature of how communities evolve and grow.

Why Can’t a Community Go Mainstream?

Let’s go back to the above definition of what a community is: A group of like-minded individuals who have a shared sense of ownership in something larger than themselves.

Those two bolded qualifiers are important.  A community is a group of people who are both like-minded AND who have a shared sense of OWNERSHIP in the community itself. By its very nature, these two qualifiers restrict the size of a community and prevent it from going mainstream.

Think about the size of a community.  As the community grows, it becomes more difficult to find new members who are of like mind as the current community AND who want to join the community as someone who will build and sustain the properties that make that community unique.

Every time a community welcomes a member who is NOT like-minded and/or who doesn’t have a desire to build or sustain the current community, the overall experience and value of that community degrades. If it happens often enough, the community itself can fracture and come undone.

Think of every community, online or offline, that you’ve ever joined and participated in.  The odds are the reason why you left that community came down to one of two reasons:

1 – It was too small

2 – It added people and you felt the values and spirit of the community was no longer appealing to you

When a community is pursuing growth, it should focus first on adding members who are like-minded with the existing community and who have a desire to work with the community to help it grow and create more value for all.

Community Growth is About Growing Value, Not Size

For years, I’ve been writing about how the social web needs to move back to a decentralized model vs a centralized one. I’ve been on the internet since the late 1980s. Over that time, I’ve been a member of countless communities covering countless topics, beliefs and ideas.

These communities have always, without fail, followed the same pattern.

1 – Start small, usually just a handful of passionate people.  Sometimes the community never grows past this point.

2 – If the community continues to grow, then its growth will either be fueled by simple word of mouth, or by the community itself personally vetting and bringing in new members. Word of mouth leads to faster growth, but the overall experience typically degrades faster.  If the community itself drives growth, the community typically stays smaller, but the experience can actually improve even more.

3 – At some point, the community either stops growing (often on purpose), or the community continues to grow and the overall experience of the community is altered to a point where the community itself becomes too detached from its original experience, and the community itself fractures.

 

Let me give you a simple example:  I joined CompuServe in the early 1990s. CompuServe had a number of chat rooms and I loved these.  One chat it had, every Sunday night, was called College Chat.  As I was still early on in my college journey at the time, having a weekly chat where I could talk to students around the country going through the same period of life I was, well it was really cool.  At first, the community was really small, about 20 or so regular members.  You had a few who would be moderators, who would drive the conversation.  After a few weeks you would start to get to know members and you’d make friends.  And all this did was deepen my connection to this group, since I would only see them once a week, for an hour every Sunday night.

After a year or so, CompuServe’s growth really started taking off.  A flood of new members to the platform meant a lot of new people participating in College Chat. Unfortunately, this degraded the experience.  The moderators found it too much to deal with, and moved on.  When they left, other regular members followed.  The new members that joined hadn’t been here and built this community up and hadn’t seen what made it special.  So they didn’t have the vested interest in building and growing the community. The community grew too big and fractured, but for that one year or so I really enjoyed College Chat.

Why Decentralized Will Win Over Centralized

When it comes to communities, in most cases, smaller is better. A small community can create deeper connections between its members, and those connections are pivotal to having a community that creates maximum value for all.

Think of it this way:  Centralization would be all of the United States. Decentralization would be the individual cities that make up the United States.  Each city has its own vibe, its own culture.  And typically, the culture and vibe of a city becomes more distinct the smaller it is.

Think of that in terms of the internet.  Twitter would be the United States, a centralized body where everyone is.  The individual cities would be decentralized online communities that you could easily visit and participate in as you wished.  A smaller community typically means a more in depth experience with like-minded people who have a much sharper focus and aim for participating in said community.

This is a big reason why I am excited about web3.  Because the promise of decentralization is so immense. I just hope as these brilliant builders are growing in a decentralized web3 world, that they will forego the desire to grow too big, too fast. Let growth flow slowly, and from the community itself.  This is how you increase your chances of growing in a way that adds to the value of the community, rather than detracting from it.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Elon’s Texts to Twitter, Instagram’s NFT Integration, Podcast Listening Dips in 2022

Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are having a great fall as we are now in October!  This is my favorite month of the year!  I love the weather, I love the colors, the falling leaves, and Halloween!  The best time of the year, in my opinion!  Here’s 3 marketing/business/web3 stories I read over the last week that caught my eye:

 

The Twitter account @techemails is absolutely fascinating.  They release text messages that have been made public via the proper filings.  Recently, they shared some text messages that Elon had with both Twitter’s current CEO as well as one an exchange with one of its co-founders, Jack Dorsey.  Dorsey’s comments about regretting that Twitter became a company were very telling. Dorsey said that Twitter should have stayed a protocol. One of the issues that has dogged Twitter throughout its history is its rocky relationship with developers. Often, Twitter would encourage developers to build apps and functionality on top of its platform, then either cut off API access with no warning, or buy an app, then cut off API access to any apps with competing functionality.  For instance, years ago Twitter bought livestreaming app Periscope, integrated it into the platform, then cut off competitor Meerkat (which was arguably more popular at the time) from having API access.  Twitter bought Tweetdeck, cutting off competitors like Twirl, and bought Summize, hurting competitors as well.

Elon seemed very intrigued by Dorsey’s vision of having Twitter as a protocol and wants to pursue moving the platform more toward decentralization. In my opinion that could only happen if Twitter went private. Even then, it would be messy.

 

Meta recently announced that it will allow Instagram and Facebook users to integrate their existing NFTs with the platform.  Why is this important? My guess is Meta would like to eventually develop an NFT marketplace.  Adding a shopping functionality to the sharing of NFTs would give creators another revenue stream, but it would also do the same for Meta, as it would likely want a cut of sales.

 

Podcasting listening is projected by Edison Research to dip slightly in 2022.  This is a bit surprising, but as Edison points out in its findings, the dip for 2022 still puts listening levels at marginally higher than 2020 levels.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute.  Apologies for the late arrival of this post, seems there were some issues with my hosting service.  Will have a pretty interesting post up on Weds (again assuming no more site issues), so try to check it out in 2 days.

Hope you have a wonderful week, you deserve it!