Elon Musk’s pending purchase of Twitter for $44 billion-with-a-B could give one the impression that the site is the top social media platform in the world. Surely, one would think, it’s in the top five.
Top 10?
Top dozen?
The fact is, when you measure monthly users, Twitter ranks 14th among social media platforms, according to analysis by Kepios, a Singapore-based company that specializes in data research. Global Research made sense of the stats, and here are some of the highlights, in terms of social media users as of April, 2022:
There are 4.65 billion monthly worldwide social media users. Of them, here are the most popular platforms* (numbers are rounded for clarity):
Facebook: 3 billion
YouTube: 2.5 billion
What’sApp: 2 billion
Instagram: 1.5 billion
WeChat: 1.25 billion
TikTok 1 billion
Let’s go down a ways…
9. Snapchat (When was the last time you used that?): 590 million
13. Telegram: 550 million
14. Twitter: 465 milion
15. Pinterest 430 million
Does 14th place strike you as a space-leading platform? Twitter is a well-known brand, but it never lived up to its potential. Twitter offered safe harbor to racists and when it finally cracked down on them, the racists cried foul that Twitter was infringing on their free speech rights.
Donald Trump started TRUTH Social once he was banned from Twitter, but TRUTH is a Twitter ripoff that is loaded with bugs. I tested it, and signing up took a month. It’s full of racists and narcissists. The more outrageous “TRUTHS” I wrote, the more hearts I got. TRUTH was DOA to begin with, but when they lose their audience to Twitter, they should pull the plug. Once they move to Twitter, the left will leave.
Musk is the world’s richest man, and can do whatever he wants with his money. People have been wrong before second guessing the man. I simply don’t see the business case for buying a low-ranking social media platform with a stock that’s going nowhere. In this graph, Twitter is the red line along the bottom: (Source: Reuters Technology)
Look — even Facebook has lost nearly half its value in the last 10 years. We’ll let Musk answer our question. Why did you buy Twitter?
While portfolio diversification is advice any sensible broker will give you, it doesn’t explain what sure looks like a purchased based on emotion.
LINKS:
Spotify now allows all podcasters to publish video (H/T to Zuri Berry)
A Substack beta supports video podcasts as well. They’ve been in beta since January, but I signed up and got an invite within 24 hours. Watch out. I may actually use it:
Netflix starts, lays off staffers from “Tudum,” a site that has original content in support of Netflix content. Debate the wisdom of this, but Netflix hired journalists in the past seven months, only to can them last week. Netflix blames its bad Q1 earnings report. Meantime, the staffers are Tweeting:
(“Tudum” was named for the sound you hear when the Netflix “N” shows on the screen.)
RECOMMENDATIONS: PODCASTING TOOLS
AUDIOGRAM CREATOR RECOMMENDATION: I’ve used a lot of tools for audiogram. I don’t love any of them. But I like Headliner best. It works well both with audio files and with already-published podcasts. It captions very quickly and accurately. The pro-level pricing, $19.99, gives you unlimited videos and transcription. If you’re more casual, for $7.99 you can have 10 videos a month - still a bargain. It takes some learning and is not highly intuitive, but results in a good end product.
TRANSCRIPT CREATOR RECOMMENDATION: For quick transcriptions, I recommend Trint. The AI service isn’t perfect, but you’ll get a good, working transcript complete with time codes. It also has some other tricks - you can create soundbites for your audiograms just by highlighting the text you want to use and making an audio clip on the spot. This is pricey - $75/month for one seat of unlimited transcription - but I use it every day. A good carpenter needs good tools.
ALSO RAN: DESCRIPT: This is a wild bit of programming, software made from the ground up for podcasting. It creates a transcript, and you can then edit your podcast the way you would a Word document. There’s no need to use an audio editor. You can automatically remove filler words and sounds like “uh,” “um,” “ya know,” and many others. The coolest part of this tool is that you can teach it your voice, and then if you later want to insert words, just type them in and - here’s to AI - it fills in those words in your natural voice. It can also create audiograms, do screen recordings, and even does basic video editing. A good choice for beginners, but advanced editors will find they still need to do cleanup after exporting.
LIKES:
STREAMING SERIES: “Julia.” I didn’t think it was possible to tell a story about Julia Child that was as engaging than 2009’s “Julie and Julia,” but HBO Max’s series “Julia” plays as a sort of charming sequel to the film. “J&J” left off where “Julia” begins - with Julia and Paul Child moving to Boston and starting her show on public television. English actress Sarah Lancashire is a strong, vulnerable Julia, never moving into Dan Ackroyd territory. David Hyde Pierce is a clever choice to play Paul, Julia’s husband.
ALBUM: Pete Townshend’s “Face The Face,” a double album released on yellow vinyl for this year’s Record Store Day. The concert was released in the ‘80s as “Deep End Live,” but only in a very cut-down form. This completes the show, with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour on guitar. Only 3,500 made.
SPONSOR:
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Thanks for the shout out. I’m a big fan of Descript. The one feature that I think blows me away is the 1-click audio cleanup (studio sound). It works wonders on Zoom recordings and phone calls.
With respect to Twitter, the company has to fundamentally change the way it monetizes its share of attention. Ads aren’t cutting it. The Blue program (I’m not sure what it’s called) was supposed to give them some recurring revenue, but we haven’t really heard about the performance of that. I doubt it’s working well. Elon may have a “freedom of speech” objective in purchasing the platform, but he won’t be able to escape addressing this problem. And maybe he already has ideas for it. I’m just very skeptical that he knows the depth of the problem, how content moderation works, the global framework he’ll be operating under, and the influence outsiders will have on his success. For all of these reasons and more it’s a fascinating case study.