Twitter platform risk

Twitter changes had been pretty wild lately for creators and indie makers:

• Removal of tweet source
• Revue newsletter shut down
• Linktree and aggregator links banned
• Links to other social media platforms banned
• Risk of suspension from verification process from signing up for Twitter Blue, or from cross-posting

To be fair, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk did caveat that they will be doing a lot of dumb things in the coming days as Twitter pivots to a new mode. And he did reverse policies that didn’t work. But the scope and rationality of the changes, and how it’s done, had not been assuring. I’m beginning to get paranoid about platform risk on Twitter. To borrow a term from the crypto space, there’s definitely a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).

Thankfully, I’m somewhat diversified in terms of distribution for my products:

• Plugins For Carrd: Telegram, email, Facebook, Reddit, Indie Hackers (and soon Pinterest, Deviantart), Flurly, Gumroad, Twitter
• Outsprint: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
• Lifelog: Telegram, Medium, Dev.to, Hashnode, Codenewbie, Quora, Instagram, Facebook, LifeBlog, Twitter
• Tech for good projects: Telegram, Buy Me A Coffee, Facebook, Twitter
• Building in public: Makerlog, WIP, email/Substack, Lifelog, Twitter

When I started being serious on Twitter, it was to market my products like Lifelog and Sheet2Bio, but a lot less so now. If all these Twitter changes happened during that phase, I would have been super worried. Right now I use Twitter mainly to build in public, and to build a personal brand so to speak. It’s more top of the funnel channel for me now. To be honest, I’m not sure how much Twitter figures in my customer acquisition channel. Twitter is top referral for Plugins For Carrd, but does it convert to paid customers? I’m not sure – I only get very few DMs about my plugins. Most of my communication with Carrd plugin customers is on the other channels and email. Likewise, my consultancy remains mostly word of mouth, and now LinkedIn, no Twitter. I upkeep a Lifelog brand account on Twitter, but it isn’t converting – what converted in the past was me sharing and talking about Lifelog (which I had since stopped doing because it wasn’t working well).

Maybe all these FUD is a good catalyst to step back, reflect, and ask:

• Do I really need to spend so much time on Twitter when it isn’t 100% clear if it helps with my business?
• What about shifting my build in public presence to other Twitter-alternative platforms (e.g. Mastodon), or distributing to more platforms (e.g. Product Hunt forum, Discord, Slack)?
• Where else can I go to diversify distribution channels for my products/services even further? Slideshare, Flipboard, Kindle, Substack for Outsprint? Ads for Plugins?
• What else can I use Twitter for, such that I have nothing to lose even if I lose access to the platform?

The other thing I use Twitter for is make friends with other indies, learn from them. That’s one aspect of the experience that I grew to like a lot. Now it’s a big reason why I continue to engage with other accounts. It’ll be hard to find equivalents to that experience.

Came for the marketing, stayed for the community.

That’s definitely one thing I will miss if I ever get deplatformed or it gets too unbearable.

Hopefully this will not come to pass.