Substack Takes On Twitter; Twitter Strikes Back
Substack Takes On Twitter; Twitter Strikes Back
The two ostensible free speech platforms should be working together.
Substack’s coming Twitter clone, “Notes”.
Substack Takes On Twitter
On April 5th, Substack announced their new product called Notes, which looks an awful lot like Twitter.
Twitter Strikes Back
Two days later, Twitter struck back, limiting Twitter users from retweeting or liking tweets that include links to Substack.
In response, Matt Taibbi, one of the journalists Elon Musk picked to report on the Twitter Files, and also one of the top writers on Substack, announced he was leaving Twitter.
Why This Is Unfortunate
One reason is that Twitter and Substack naturally complement each other: Twitter excels at shortform content, and Substack is better for longform content. The obvious solution would be for each to stick with what it’s best at (Twitter should get rid of its long tweet feature for its paying users as well).
It’s probably more unfortunate for Substack, as it’s a much smaller company, it has been losing money, at least as of 2021 (it would be nice to see its 2022 numbers),
And venture capital financing has dried up,
(The screen captures above are from a thread by @alex_valaitis that Twitter won’t let me share here).
Which led Substack to raise money directly in a community round:
Since I shared that post with my subscribers at the time, I ought to share Valaitis’s warning about investing in Substack as well:
As a counterpoint to Valaitis, it’s worth noting that Substack is raising nearly four times what it set out to with this community round, suggesting there is strong demand from its writers.
I indicated that I was interested in investing in Substack myself, and have until April 20th to act on that. I’m now undecided, given the conflict with Twitter. Ideally, Twitter just buys Substack itself; Substack’s current valuation is about 1/75th of what Elon Musk paid for Twitter.
Failing that, hopefully both companies can come to a modus vivendi. I like both, and think both can have promising futures.
As De Gaulle would say, The Internet graveyards are full of indispensible platforms. Microsoft and Apple do this petty software warfare to each other on a daily basis, but journalists worship and love those corporations. So let’s hold the one tycoon we hate, the villain-of-the-week, to a higher standard. It’s so tetchy and pusillanimous. The media is like your mother after she bought a smartphone in 2015 sending you nagging texts all day
"I’m now undecided, given the conflict with Twitter. Ideally, Twitter just buys Substack itself; "
What!? That would be terrible! Substack would then be a plaything of rich, crazy, autocratic Elon Musk.