Notes on X

The Work of My Life: July 2023 Report

“There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.” – Tennessee Williams

On the social media platform previously known as Twitter, there were three broad categories of human users: Lurkers, Participants, and Creators. Lurkers were those who enjoyed having access to the raw flow of information the site provided but for personal or professional reasons had decided not to directly engage in the mayhem. For example, many finance professionals were paranoid about running afoul of onerous compliance rules, while aspiring executives in industry loathed the prospect of liking the “wrong” tweet or—worse still—composing one they would someday come to regret.

For Participants, the site was also a useful source of intelligence and entertainment; however, unmoored as they were by the constraints that held back the Lurkers, they were free to like, retweet, comment on, or troll whatever content compelled them to do so. Participants played an active role in the Twitter ecosystem, and their engagement helped shape the algorithm’s prioritization. Although prior management undoubtedly and controversially interfered with this spontaneous process for raw political purposes, the site mostly functioned as a chaotic meritocracy.

Old Twitter | Getty

What made the entire thing viable were the several hundred thousand Creators—those accounts whose content drew a critical mass of eyeballs to the site in the first place. Celebrities, musicians, journalists, influencers, and all manner of expert analysts contributed original work, generating the impressions Twitter could monetize via its advertising model. The unspoken deal between the site and its core Creators was simple enough: Twitter would keep all the advertising revenue, but Creators were free to derive benefit from building an audience. Actors might promote their new film, singers their new album, or journalists their latest article. In many instances, such promotional work invited followers to click away from Twitter where Creators could capture value offsite, which was fine enough with Twitter management—the symbiotic relationship meant both sides had to win.

Longtime readers of Doomberg will know that we built this franchise at the nexus between Old Twitter and Substack—a relatively new entrant in the blogging space when we launched our life-changing project back in early 2021. For the first year of our existence, we regularly updated readers on our progress in a monthly series titled “The Work of My Life” where we openly shared our growth strategies and key metrics. These often included both the number of new Twitter followers and Substack email subscribers we had attracted each month, understanding full well that the customer journey typically relied upon the former converting to the latter. Since going behind the paywall in May of 2022, we’ve published fewer such pieces, reserving them for important updates and strategic developments. It is with mixed emotions that we resurrect this franchise to describe how our business has recently been fundamentally altered and to announce our plans to handle it.

Last October, Twitter became a privately owned company. The drawn-out court process that preceded the transaction’s closure made clear that the new owner regretted offering to buy it, and the deal he struck to finance his purchase left the company with an unsustainable amount of debt. The ensuing chaos has been well-documented. With advertising revenue cratering, Twitter’s management began a desperate campaign of cost-cutting and fired the majority of the existing employees within a matter of weeks.

Sinking | X

More alarming to us, outsiders who leveraged Twitter to grow their businesses—from Creators to those who used its Application Programming Interface (API) for a variety of academic and commercial purposes—were no longer viewed as partners. Instead, revenue generated by their hard work was treated as value owed to Twitter. A series of haphazard new policies were rolled out, walked back, and tightened again in an effort to capture it, leaving many of Old Twitter’s top Creators bewildered. It began within a few weeks of the ownership change (emphasis added throughout):

“Twitter CEO Elon Musk has decided it won't allow for free promotion on the platform, which basically amounts to posting the handle of an account on a different social media site. The platform announced the strange new policy on Sunday in a series of tweets.

‘We recognize that many of our users are active on other social media platforms. However, we will no longer allow free promotion of certain social media platforms on Twitter,’ posted the Twitter support account. ‘Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.’”

While that policy did not explicitly include links to Substack and was retracted within days of its proclamation, it was a harbinger of things to come. Given the swirling controversy surrounding Twitter—and recognizing its importance to many of its authors—the Substack team announced in early April that it would be rolling out Notes, a new feature that closely resembled Twitter across many dimensions. Retribution came swiftly:

“In one of the pettiest moves imaginable, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has blocked all links to the popular publishing platform Substack on Twitter, an almost direct acknowledgment that people would rather blog elsewhere. Even simple mentions of ‘substack’ are affected, as The Verge reports.

‘In other news, any link with Substack in its name is now blocked on Twitter,’ blogger and game developer Rohit Krishnan tweeted. ‘You can post it, but you cannot like it or comment on it or retweet it.’”

Notes | Substack

Four months and multiple policy changes later, the mere mention of “Substack” in a tweet leads to substantial de-boosting, and we suspect many accounts closely associated with the site are being punished by the algorithm. Like the dozens of other Substack authors we have spoken with, the impact on our business has been profound. In September of 2022—only weeks before Twitter became a private company—we had our biggest month ever on the platform: our tweets generated nearly 50 million impressions and led to an incredible 31,000 net new followers. It’s been downhill ever since. Last month, our metrics were off those highs by anywhere between 50-95%. As an experiment, we recently tweeted out a link to what was our latest piece at the time—something that routinely generated hundreds of likes on Old Twitter. Despite having more than 258,000 followers, this was the result:

By comparison, here is a similar tweet we published back in September:

To be clear, the current owner of Twitter is free to do whatever he likes with his property. He has decided that anybody associated with Substack is no longer welcome, and after months of working through a bout of the sunk cost fallacy, we have decided it is time to move on. Starting today, we will be placing our Twitter account on Lurker mode and shifting our limited resources to Notes. We will no longer actively engage with the platform, and direct messages will be infrequently checked. This was a difficult decision for our small team to make, but one we are all at peace with. Twitter, quite literally, isn’t Twitter anymore—last week, it became X. There is no better time to put a bow on what was otherwise an amazing experience.

The Future of Doomberg: Notes & Growth

Why go with Notes instead of the numerous other Twitter competitors like Threads, Nostr, or Mastodon? Why not participate in all of them? We settled on Notes because the team at Substack has been our partner from the beginning. In many ways, we have co-branded the words “Doomberg” and “Substack” and this decision simplifies things for our subscribers. We also participated in their recent author-led fundraising round, making us small equity owners of the company. While this did not influence our decision to leave Twitter (we tried our best to make it work long after funding that investment), it did weigh on our decision about where to go. We are now all-in on the Substack experiment.

While Notes is still in its infancy, it is a different, more user-centric place to engage online than what we’ve become inured to on Twitter. There are no ads, and the discussions are largely between writers (entrepreneurs) and their readers (valued customers)—a civilized, intelligent proposition that will only grow in relevance as more readers become active on the platform. We encourage all of you to join the Participant ranks on Notes if you haven’t already, and if you are an email subscriber of ours—free or paid—our notes and restacks will automatically and chronologically show up under your “Subscribed” tab:

Here’s where we need a little help from you. Old Twitter was useful in three main ways: (1) It was a source of ideas for new pieces; (2) It allowed us to promote the work of other Creators; and (3) It was where many new subscribers first encountered our work. We think we can recreate each of these with an assist from our readers.

We occasionally receive emails from some of you with suggestions for things we might be interested in writing about. While not all of these recommendations result in articles, we appreciate the tips and always learn something when we receive them. If you have such ideas, please send them along. Every email is read by a member of our team, ensuring your effort will not go wasted. We are excited by the prospect of crowdsourcing from such a brilliant set of readers.

To promote the work of other creators, we will occasionally send an email summary of the content we particularly enjoyed consuming to our full list of subscribers, along with links to our recent podcast appearances. We are mindful of not clogging your inbox, so we will only do so once we have a critical mass of excellent work worth sharing. If we do this correctly, it should be a win-win. You will gain access to creators you may not be familiar with, and we will still be able to showcase the work of others.

Finally, Substack has developed a suite of tools that enable audience-led growth, and we intend to leverage them more fully going forward. Instead of trying to please or even trick an ever-changing algorithm that is programmed against us, we will continue to focus on delighting our readers—a move that perfectly aligns our incentives. We humbly request that if you have benefited from our work thus far, please consider rewarding us in any of the following ways:

• If you are a free subscriber and have been pondering whether to join us behind the paywall, you can help us by upgrading to paid today. We are 100% subscriber supported, and your patronage would be much appreciated. (Upgrade here.)

• If you have a friend or family member that you feel would benefit from reading Doomberg, you can help us by gifting them a paid subscription. (Send a gift here.)

• If you feel uncomfortable purchasing a subscription for others but still want to share our work, you can use Substack’s new referral program to help us grow our audience. It is free, and we have created a series of rewards for those who actively take advantage of it. (Get credit for referring by using the “Share” link in the header of this, or any, article.)

• If you enjoy our articles, please remember to hit the “Like” and “Restack” buttons. Such actions are free for you but mean the world to us.

As disappointed as we are to leave Twitter, we are filled with excitement about the possibilities this tough decision might enable. We are now liberated to pour everything we have into one website, and our motivation has never been higher.

THANK YOU for being part of this crazy journey. We have found what we were meant to be doing in life, and we fully intend to keep doing it for years to come.