Twitter vs. X: Product Lessons For Startup Founders

Introduction

• To determine if users are getting value from a product, it's not enough to rely on a single metric, such as the amount of content watched, as this can lead to optimizing for the wrong things and creating a negative user experience (10s).
• Founders and CEOs have a unique advantage in guiding their company's vision and values, allowing them to make decisions that align with their original goals (23s).
• Twitter, now known as X, has undergone significant changes under new ownership, including a shift from a chronological feed to a more algorithm-driven feed, similar to TikTok (1m35s).
• This change has resulted in users seeing more content that may not align with their original interests, such as more extreme or sensational content (1m51s).

Elon Musk's Vision for Twitter

• Elon Musk has stated that the goal of Twitter is to make users feel equally uncomfortable regardless of their political leanings, which may have been achieved, but at the cost of user happiness and engagement with meaningful content (2m20s).
• The emphasis on engagement metrics, such as dwell time, can lead product teams to optimize for these numbers at the expense of harder-to-measure qualities like taste, quality, and educational value (3m14s).
• The challenge for product teams is to balance the need for engagement with the need to provide value to users, and to find ways to measure and optimize for these more subjective qualities (3m24s).
• The Twitter algorithm prioritizes content that users engage with, even if it's not necessarily what they want to see, as it's driven by a business model focused on advertisers and selling video seconds (3m42s).
• This approach can lead to users spending more time on the site, but may ultimately result in poorer long-term retention if the content is not desirable, causing users to stop using the site or switch to something else (4m20s).
• Algorithmic feeds can sometimes put users in a "bad state" where they feel like every experience is negative, yet they continue to use the site (4m55s).
• To address this, users can use features like clicking "not interested" in a post, but this may not be explicit enough, raising questions about product design and user experience (5m10s).
• The Twitter feed can be cluttered with unwanted content, such as political videos, and users may need to use multiple tools to solve the problem, highlighting potential product design issues (5m45s).
• When users need to create long videos or threads to explain how to use a product, it may indicate that the product design is flawed (6m41s).
• The changes to Twitter's algorithm may have been driven by a top-down approach to increase engagement, but it's unclear if the long-term consequences have been fully considered (6m49s).

The Evolution of Social Networks

• Examining the history of social networks and how they've evolved can provide insight into the potential outcomes of Twitter's current approach (7m1s).
• When Facebook started, it had no Newsfeed, but rather a personal wall where users could post content, and the biggest change the product made for the better was moving to the Newsfeed, which showed users content from people they had chosen to see, despite initial uproar and protests (7m16s).
• As Facebook became popular, the Newsfeed got diluted with content from people users didn't want to keep in touch with, leading to the rise of Instagram, which initially offered a new network with a different type of content and a network of early adopters (8m12s).
• However, as Instagram grew in popularity, the feed became diluted with content from brands and clickbait, making it less engaging for users, and the same pattern was repeated with TikTok, which skipped straight to showing all possible content and relying on algorithms to figure out what users want to see (9m2s).
• The key lesson for product builders is to think about the problem they are trying to solve and whether it's about connection between real people or just entertainment, and to consider the limitations of human communities, such as Dunbar's number, which suggests that people can only really know 150 others (9m22s).
• A social network that constrains itself to a smaller group might be more interesting, but it would require a different way to monetize, as it would not generate as many hours of viewership and ad revenue (9m52s).

Recommendations for Twitter's Improvement

• If Elon Musk were to take charge of Twitter, the number one thing he should do is reconsider the idea of an algorithmic feed and find a way to prioritize content from people users have chosen to see (10m20s).
• Twitter's introduction of a lot of "entropy content" such as fist fights and car crashes needs to be done more judiciously, with clearer ways for users to give feedback about what they want and don't want to see (10m37s).
• Users can curate their Twitter feed by spending a few minutes telling the platform what they like and don't like, making it more effective (10m55s).
• Another way to curate content is by using pre-made lists, which can provide a high-quality way to learn about specific topics, such as the Ukraine war or UK politics (11m11s).
• These lists are powerful, but hard to find, and users have to go out of their way to discover them (11m38s).

Twitter's Strengths and Weaknesses

• Twitter is still valuable for breaking news events, as it allows first-party information owners to easily put content onto the platform (12m16s).
• Community notes have done a relatively good job of calling out fake news versus real news (12m32s).
• The Blue Tick, originally a status symbol and signal of credibility, can now be purchased for a monthly fee, which has overloaded its meaning and made it less trustworthy (12m58s).
• The ability to edit tweets has been implemented and has not had the negative consequences that some people predicted (13m47s).
• Twitter's sidebar features multiple icons that users rarely click on, including a chat GPT feature that doesn't make sense for the platform, indicating a lack of clear product direction and consumer product sense (13m51s).

Product Leadership and Vision

• A product leader's job is to clearly articulate the product's purpose and usage to the team and the world, which Twitter seems to be deviating from (14m26s).
• Elon Musk's success in other domains, such as SpaceX, doesn't translate to mass market consumer products, as seen in Twitter's recent changes (14m49s).
• Jeff Bezos once said that taste is not transferable across domains, which is evident in the difference between Tesla and Twitter's product decisions (15m1s).

The Rebranding of Twitter to "X"

• Twitter's rebranding to "X" is surprising, especially since the original name had become a verb, indicating a successful product (15m40s).
• The name "X" seems to be based on Elon Musk's personal preference for the letter, rather than a thoughtful product naming process (17m19s).
• In contrast, successful product names, such as "Bump" and "Monzo," were chosen based on user feedback and the product's functionality (16m10s).
• Monzo's name was chosen from 14,000 user suggestions after the company was forced to change its original name due to a trademark conflict (16m55s).
• Changing a successful product name, especially one that has become a verb, is seen as a mistake, as it can alienate users and lose brand recognition (17m11s).
• A grand plan for a future product should be clear before announcing a name change, as changing the name first can be confusing, especially if the product's direction is not yet defined (17m28s).
• When considering a name change as a founder, it's best to do it early on when there's less awareness about the product, and the name should be easy to say, spell, and ideally related to the product's function (18m8s).
• The best companies bring meaning to their name over time, rather than the other way around, as seen with companies like Monzo, Google, and Amazon (18m36s).

Impact of Changes and Importance of Vision

• The recent changes at Twitter may have impacted revenue, with advertisers pulling out due to concerns about the type of content their ads may appear next to, resulting in a significant decline in ad revenue (19m2s).
• While revenue metrics may not be great, engagement metrics are likely off the charts, which can be a problem when a team is focused on optimizing a single number, leading to an imbalance in priorities (19m22s).
• Top-down ownership and a clear vision are crucial in product development, as seen in the development of Google Photos, where a consistent worldview of the product's purpose and use case was maintained (19m50s).
• For a product founder starting out, it's essential to articulate the product's purpose, target user, and desired user states to ensure a clear direction and avoid potential pitfalls (20m22s).
• Optimizing for a single metric can lead to negative outcomes, as seen in the example of Twitter where engagement metrics are up, but users may feel like they've wasted their time after using the app (20m44s).
• Consumer product founders should not mindlessly optimize for a single metric, but rather have a clear vision for their product and consider multiple factors (21m14s).
• The role of the product leader is crucial in ensuring the product has a clear purpose and is consistent, even if it's not the optimal way to grow the product (21m27s).
• Founders and CEOs have the moral authority to enforce their vision for the product, as seen in the example of Steve Jobs and the iPhone (21m51s).
• Having a clear vision and authority can help prevent the product from becoming an "engagement farm" and ensure it stays true to its purpose (21m25s).
• Steve Jobs made decisions on what features to include and exclude from the iPhone, and while some decisions may have been wrong in hindsight, they were baked into the culture of Apple and guided the product's development (22m1s).