🐦 X NEEDS YOU

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X needs you to start posting. So does everyone else

X MARKS THE SPOT

The the jury is still out on Elon Musk’s rebranding of Twitter to X.

If your social media feeds are anything like mine (hold that thought), you would have seen a lot of marketing and branding professionals clowning the rebrand, calling it haphazard and amateurish, or worse.

Earlier this Summer, even respected tech news outlets were making clickbait-y jokes about it.

But. Love him or hate him, Musk operates on a different wavelength than most other people.

TWITTER LITE

That wavelength saw Twitter’s brand identity wiped out almost overnight: it was not just renamed, but the app’s familiar blue bird was replaced by a minimal black-and-white “X” that looked to many to be sourced from a public domain font.

But, what did this mean for the business?

Well, we’ve just learned that the renaming and rebrand led to a 4% drop in weekly active users in the weeks after (August 6-20), while the X app fell four spots in the Overall App Store category rankings, to No. 36.

Bright spot: “Twitter Lite“ (a version of the app designed for emerging markets) experienced a surge —probably thanks to users who were searching for the original platform name.

CURRENT EXPERIENCE

It’s easy to get distracted by his juvenile “edgelord” antics and vulgar, hostile tweets posts. But zoom out:

• Musk is founder, chairman, CEO and chief technology officer of SpaceX (2022 revenue: US$4.6b);

• He’s the angel investor, CEO, product architect and former chairman of Tesla, Inc.(2022 revenue: US$94b; marketcap: US$745b);

• Elon is owner, chairman and CTO of X Corp., which owns Twitter (estimated value: US$20b, less than half of what he paid for Twitter);

• He’s the founder of the Boring Company (2022 valuation: US$5.7b);

• He’s also a co-founder of Neuralink (estimated valuation: US$5b) and of ChatGPT maker OpenAI (estimated valuation: US$27b-US$29b);

• He also serves as president of the Musk Foundation (US$9.4b in assets, according to a 2021 tax filing).

Any one of those bullet points would be the achievement of a lifetime. Guaranteed, he doesn’t care about your opinion of the new X logo, or the way in which it was rolled out.

But what he does care about is whether you’re posting on the platform or not.

STAGE FRIGHT

Lately, I’ve noticed an increasing number of folks who are full of interesting knowledge and insights, hesitating to share that intel online.

It begs an interesting question. Why do so many of us feel a pang of hesitation before hitting post?

Well, historically, plenty of folks, even experts in their fields, have struggled with putting themselves out there. Some of our best known performers get debilitating stage fright. Fear has come hand in hand with self-expression for a minute, now.

But you not posting is more than a personal thing for you. It’s an issue for all of us.

Stay with me.

X NEEDS YOU

In researching this piece, I came across a staggering 2021 stat from Pew Research: just 25% of Twitter/X users are responsible for a whopping 97% of all tweets.

If this kind of concentration doesn’t feel good to you, trust your instincts.

Not only could it lead to a serious “echo chamber” effect, as users see the same voices and opinions over and over (limiting exposure to other perspectives), but similarly, if a small subset of users is highly vocal, it can give the illusion that their opinions are the majority viewpoint, when they’re not.

The 25%/97% imbalance is all the more surprising when you consider that X is arguably the most straightforward social platform around. It doesn’t require video or images or even an artistic eye, and isn’t exactly known as a hub for high-brow expression.

OK, WHAT’S THE POINT HERE?

Look for this ratio to even out.

We believe generative AI will reduce the age-old stage fright narrative when it comes to posting online.

While ChatGPT obviously won’t end all of your fears, it can temper your apprehensions, and end your writer’s block, by guiding, editing, augmenting, and enhancing your creative impulses —hopefully making the path to press “post” a tad less nerve wracking.

Of course, it shouldn’t be nerve wracking at all. Online life allows for more experimentation that most people think. Posted a clanker? Delete! Want to test the waters? Post anonymously, so you can audition different tones, or explore different niches.

The beauty of online expression today is that it offers all of us a lab to try different voices, and —thanks to social media’s transformation from a connection tool to a discovery engine— reach a limitless range of audiences.

Don’t know where to start? Your everyday life —your own hobbies, interests, expertise or experience— are a great place. They’re authentic (and, by definition, not something that could ever be replaced by AI.)

There is literally no one or no thing on Earth that can match your voice and your knowledge.

Your audience, no matter how niche, is out there and waiting.

Still not sure you want to post for yourself? Then do it for the rest of us.

The world deserves to hear from more than just 25% of X’s users.

More:

Pew Research: Comparing highly active and less active tweeters »»

Written by Jon Kallus. Any feedback? Just reply!