Sunday Finds + Thoughts on Threads vs. Twitter

Pods on Dollar General, Texas Instruments, and more...

Welcome to Chit Chat Money’s Sunday Finds + One Thought From Last Week newsletter. In this newsletter you will find a topic I wanted to write about from last week, links to shows we’ve recently released, and links to some interesting articles, podcasts, and tweets. Check out the archive here.

Chit Chat Money Podcasts From Last Week

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Some Thoughts on Threads vs. Twitter

We invested a lot of time in our Twitter accounts. It was a great way to find new listeners for the podcast because of how many investors around the world spend time there. Of course, fintwit is also fun and interesting and I have made a ton of friends there. Use it correctly and you can find so many interesting stocks to research.

But over the last year, Twitter has become increasingly antagonistic to accounts such as ours. It now throttles links to Substack/other websites (the exact opposite of what we want) while promoting increasingly sensational/false posts just to drive impressions (something we don’t want to participate in).

Check out this chart on social media news site referrals. I doubt it looks much different for links to Spotify, Apple Pods, and YouTube.

Add all this together, and it has become clear that Twitter is declining in value for our podcast business. This is disappointing given we have close to 30k combined followers across our three accounts. But it just doesn’t drive the same use for us as two years ago.

This is why I decided to put more time and effort into Meta’s Twitter clone Threads (check our accounts here and here). You may have heard of it but it launched a few months back and is slowly adding features.

Yes, I understand that Meta is the same company that throttled news links on Facebook, but we have to try something if Twitter is becoming more irrelevant by the day. Maybe Substack has the outside track to replacing what Twitter is losing, they seem to value all stakeholders and actually want to help podcasters/writers succeed instead of leech value from them. A man can hope.

Threads is fine. It doesn’t have many features, but that is to be expected given it is less than a year old. They are using Instagram’s massive scale as an advantage, which is smart.

But there are so many things they are botching. Here’s a short list:

• Not rolling out blatant copies to Twitter features. We want DMs, cashtags, follower feeds, gifs, and robust search tools. Not voice notes. What?

• Trying to over-algorithm the feed. I’ve muted approximately 100 accounts posting half-naked photos that are being shoved into my feed. Meta, you make enough money on horny dudes over at Instagram. Stop throwing this stuff to me on Threads when I clearly don’t want it.

• Trying to “widen” instead of “narrow” what I want to see. Twitter was great when you could craft what type of posts you want to see (for me, that is investing, business, and some sports stuff). Threads is trying to show me random content that I continue to mute but it continues to show up in my feed. Let users refine what type of stuff they want to see, don’t decide for them. Enough with these cooking recipe posts.

Online discussion forums die slowly, then all at once. My base case is that fintwit dies over the next three years. The only question is: what will replace it? Threads should be on the fast track, but they are trying hard to beat themselves.

See you next week,

Brett

***Our fund, Arch Capital, may own securities discussed in this newsletter. Check our holdings page and read our full disclosure to learn more.***

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3 Intriguing Reads 

At least five interesting things for the end of your week (#16)

Evolution AB Investment Thesis

• Costco - The Big Picture

But what fascinated me most about Costco was the people. No one was dressed up. Who knows, especially in Southern California, you can look like a homeless person and be rich. But most looked like they didn’t work in air-conditioning and they were out to save a buck. All colors, all ethnicities, we were all in it together. Twice people bumped into me and apologized. Most places people don’t even look back, or yell it’s your fault. The rich are grubbing for advantage, not worrying about the rest, but when you’re average, you watch out for each other, you feel like you’re all in it together.

And although I felt somewhat alien, I did not feel superior. But then I thought of people I knew who wouldn’t be caught dead in Costco. It’s beneath them. They don’t want to hang with those people. As if something would rub off.

1 Good Podcast

Smart, Funny, and Insightful Tweets:

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