Elon Musk's win may have been ex's loss.
The world's richest man and Twitter ex CEO seeing users
flee his social media platform since President Trump won the
election.
Meanwhile, startup Blue Sky appears to be reaping those rewards.
Is this a permanent shift in social media habits?
Let's talk about it with Christopher Tsar.
He's the senior editor at Fast Company.
Joins us now.
He's been writing about this.
Christopher great.
Great to see you my friend.
So first let's talk about how many users have fled
Twitter or X as we are now calling it since
the election.
Yeah, sure.
Well, it's a fast moving situation.
I think the last figure that I saw was 2.5
million people have joined Blue Sky in the last week,
which is basically when the election happened.
So and that was just updated I think yesterday before
that they were saying about a million.
So it's it's moving really quickly.
This looks like one of those, one of those network
effect things were worth really seeing.
Rapid adoption of this platform almost immediate.
And that is a pretty dramatic number to hear about
now.
I did also read, though, the traffic, meanwhile, picked up
on X while users fled traffic picked up.
What do you know?
Yeah, well, I think that there was a bomb from
people wanting to know what was happening with the election.
As a, as a news person, I, I still use
XI, you know, I, I almost feel like I have
to, just to follow certain kinds of conversations.
And I was definitely using it on election night and,
and then in the days after the election.
So I don't doubt that there was, there was a
big spike in, in, you know, in usage of of
X around that.
I think the question now is what, what happens next?
Yeah, I think they had one of their biggest traffic
days after the election since the platform had started.
I'm curious, Christopher, what you've seen in terms of content,
in terms of content moderation leading up to and after
the election, Have you noticed a palpable difference on X
on exit too?
Well, I mean, so, you know, Elon Musk bought the,
the, the platform a few years ago and it's been
slow.
I think it's been slowly creeping toward this.
You know, the user base has changed a lot because
of, because there's a lot more people who, who are
just big fans of Elon Musk on there.
And he's also sort of, I think he's amplified a
lot of those voices by, you know, letting them get
verified and they've, they've, they've built really huge audiences.
So I think, you know, especially since he announced that
he was all in for Trump, like it, it shifted,
it changed a lot.
There's just a lot of it's tilted toward pro Trump
content.
I mean, that's really the way to put it.
So if you're, you know, if you're trying to sift
through that for news, it, it becomes a lot more
difficult.
You know, when you when a news story breaks, you
don't necessarily want to, to hear, you know, all this
amplification of of users that are tilted toward one side.
So it's shifted a lot.
And definitely when he announced he was going to be
all in for Trump, that that was a big shift.
And then in the lead up to to the election,
it was a big shift.
And I think after the election too, because Trump won,
there's such a there's a jubilance, I think with with
people who wanted him to win.
And so that that's naturally also being reflected now in
the content on X.
Yeah.
He wasn't just a a supporter.
He was Trump's top donor.
Many felt he was essentially his running mate.
Some feel he was actually the reason the young men
turned down in such large numbers could have put Trump
over the top.
Not that it was all that close of an election,
but there was even reports in the Washington Post that
Republican accounts were amplified that they gained followers at the
same pace the Democratic leaning accounts we're losing followers.
It's strange cajolity to suggest that that's a a coincidence,
Christopher.
It's unprecedented.
I mean, social media is not is not that it's
it's a pretty new thing to begin with when we're
talking about the history.
And so like the fact that we have a, a
major social network where the owner and basically person who
has the sole like last word on anything on there
is now suddenly specifically saying, I'm for this candidate, I
want this candidate to win.
It's unprecedented.
Like we just have never seen something like this before.
I don't doubt that it had a big impact on
the election and on the way people voted.
I don't either.
So let's talk about this blue sky.
Now you are on the platform.
How is it different from the other social media platforms?
And what are your thoughts on the platform thus far?
Though it's early, it's early.
I, it's a good beginning.
You know, one of the reasons that a lot of
people, including myself, are still on X is because it's
just been really hard to replicate.
I don't quite know why that is.
It's, it's tricky to try to explain it, but there's
a, there's an element of real time news that that
exists on X and, and you can curate your lists
very carefully.
So you can get news from specific sources.
And when you are looking like I, I'm in the,
I'm in the news business.
So when I'm looking for a piece of breaking news,
I want to see what people are saying about it
in real time.
And I want to see what people who are very,
who not just verified, but people who are like reputable
are saying about it.
And you can curate lists and still do that on
X Blue sky also lets you do that.
It, it obviously doesn't have the, the the user ship
that X has right now because it's still growing and
it's still small, But I think that the promise is
good.
Like if you can do the same thing on on
on blue sky that you can do on X in
terms of like real time news, news gathering, like I
think that's going to be huge.
One of the problems with some of the alternatives threads
is a great example is they just put this algorithm
in in there where it's really difficult to find anything
in real time.
You, you still just end up getting a lot of
stuff that that that threads thinks you, you want to
see when really you're just looking for the latest, latest
information.
So, yeah, I think the the promise is, is great
on Blue Sky.
I hope, I hope it lasts.
Yeah.
I, I still use X myself.
It, it it really is hard to replace what they've
built.
And and and certainly the user base is still massive.
Are we seeing news organizations join Blue Sky yet?
Yeah, I mean, we did the Fast Company's on there
now.
We, we're seeing a lot of, you know, I think
all the major news platforms are, have some presence on
there now.
There's been a few that have notably left.
XI think the Guardian was one that just recently announced
they were going to leave.
XNPR did a while ago.
I, I think NPR might still be on there, but
they, they, they said they weren't going to tweet anymore.
So, yeah, you, you are seeing the news organizations and
you're seeing journalists.
Journalists were a big part of early Twitter.
They were, they've always been a part of of, you
know, they were always a part of big part of
Twitter before must took it over.
And they're still obviously are a big part of it.
But if if I think of it with a platform
like blue Sky, if they can kind of replicate how
Twitter was able to grow into what it was, I
think, you know, they have a good shot.
I think it's going to, I think it's still going
to be tough to, to, to, to, it's, it's tough
to say whether or not this actually becomes the new,
the new Twitter or the new X.
It really is.
It's, it's, I mean, I feel like we've seen this
before where there's been early platforms that have had promise
and then just didn't, it didn't manifest in the way
we thought it was going to.
I, I feel the same way.
We have certainly heard this story before.
It's just really difficult to replicate what Twitter X has.
I'm curious.
So a name lost in all this and, and it's
a bit ironic is president-elect Trump's Truth Social.
Where is that platform and all of this?
Well, it's, it's there.
He still uses it.
president-elect Trump does use it and he was using it.
He's been using it to, to announce, you know, his
appointees in, in the weeks since the election.
And what, what ends up happening for a lot of
like everyday social media users like myself, is I just
end up seeing the truth, the true social stuff come
through on X.
Like someone will screenshot it and put it in there.
I think that's how a lot of it gets spread
true, true social.
I mean, I, I, I think because they're publicly traded,
you can see the finances are not great there.
So like as a, as a business, we know it's,
it's a tough sell.
I've heard people say why don't the X and, and
true social merge and just become one social network?
That's not the craziest idea in the world.
So who knows?
I think that to answer your question, and I think
like a lot of there are people on Truth Social,
obviously, but a lot of what spreads outside of Truth
Social is done through other social networks where people screenshot
the the true social posts and then and then place
them elsewhere.
Yeah, truthfully, Christopher, I'd never been on it.
I, I have like you seen those posts screenshotted and
posted on Twitter.
And there's the stock.
Trump media truly trades like a meme stock.
It makes no sense.
There are no fundamentals to the value of that company.
And I've heard the user base is somewhere around 100,000.
So why Elon would want to acquire it?
Maybe just a favor to President Trump more than anything.
Finally, Fidelity recently estimated that X had cratered some 80
percent of its value since Elon acquired it.
Presumably that number is cratering even further.
Have you heard any plans about a change of direction
for Twitter or jumping truly into television, creating some sort
of a network?
I don't, I don't know what they're going to do.
I mean, so the big reason for that cratering that
you're talking about is the lack of content moderation that's
on there.
Advertisers don't want to be near that kind of stuff.
I mean, they, they, they really don't like, they don't
even like the news business because they think it's a
little too dicey.
Like they didn't want to be around COVID-19 content, for
example, when, when that was happening.
Like brands, like, you know, big brands want to be
in an environment where that is safe and, and X
is not a safe environment.
So I, I, you know, if you're an advertiser, that's,
that's, that's a tough sell.
And so I don't, I really honestly don't know what,
what they're, what they're going to do.
And maybe Elon Musk doesn't care.
Like, you know, he, he has money and he, he
can continue to use this as a megaphone, which is
what he's been doing.
The fact that it might make some advertising money is,
you know, maybe beside the point when you're talking about
the the way he's been using it.
It does not appear he he's all that concerned.
Well, it's really been an interesting conversation.
Please follow Christopher Zara on X and of course, now
on Blue Sky and follow Fast Company as well.
Really enjoyed it.
Christopher, thanks so much.
Yeah, thanks for having me.