Sky high

It's time to move to Bluesky.

This is an extract from last week's IMTW.

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Issue № 116 | London, Sunday 17 November 2024

Read on to learn why:

① Twitter is a cesspit of fanatics that’s too damaging for any brand.

② Bluesky offers the verification and trust Twitter never could.

③ Financial firms’s reputations will be protected until proven guilty.

④ Digital capital markets will enjoy instant settlement with digital money.

⑤ CMOs earn respect in the C-suite by demonstrating business outcomes.

⑥ High performers deserve your attention more than under performers.

⑦ Savvy investors will make a lot of money from a Trump presidency.

?? But first, flashback to June 2021 when I told you that events are back. This week, the world’s major cities are spending more than ever to land the biggest events, despite companies pulling back on spending for annual conferences and attendance dwindling.

What's new

Bluesky has had quite a week, the New York Times reports.

In short:

• “In the week since the United States presidential election, Elon Musk has used X, the social media platform he owns, to reiterate his support for President-elect Donald J. Trump. Some of the platform’s users have decided that they would rather post elsewhere. Among the largest beneficiaries of that desire is Bluesky, a rival service that has gained more than a million new users in the week since the election. The majority of the new users live in the United States, Canada and Britain.”
• “Bluesky, which began in 2019 as a project by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, is among several challengers that have each experienced bursts of momentum since Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022 and subsequent rebranding of it.”
• “Many of the people leaving X are disappointed by the outcome of the election and now associate the platform with Mr. Musk’s support of Mr. Trump. Others are frustrated by the type of content that seems to be rising to the top of their feeds. ‘You were getting this awful timeline of far-right, white supremacist, conspiracy theory posts — which the great majority of people don’t want to interact with on a daily basis,’ said Dr. McGregor.”

Why it matters

I loved Twitter for its serendipity, authenticity and the relationships it allowed me to build. I’ve met people on Twitter who later became suppliers, bosses and even partners. I’ve taught, debated and mostly learnt on the platform. Hell, I devoted one of the first issues of IMTW to it, then when Musk took over, I wrote him a letter to help. I loved Twitter. But Twitter as we knew it is dead.

① Today, as X, it’s a cesspit of fanatics that’s too damaging for any brand - both personal and corporate - to be anywhere near. Mainstream media are disowning it, French newspapers are fighting it, and a million people a day are now flocking to Bluesky.

With 16 million users overall, Bluesky lags far behind the likes of Threads, Meta’s competitor to X, which this month reported that it had reached 275 million monthly active users. That’s missing the point though. Twitter was never the biggest social medium either but its reach always far exceeded its size. Bluesky has huge momentum and it’s appealing to people who miss what Twitter was in its early years. I don’t think any social medium will be able to capture mainstream media’s attention the way Twitter did for the best part of a decade but Bluesky is the one that will at least come closest to replicating the experience.

What to do about it

Take action

My advice to you this week is short and sweet: abandon your personal and corporate presence on Twitter and migrate to a Bluesky account.

There’s no need to delete your Twitter profile - unless you’re paranoid about AI being trained on its content. Leave a parting message there to tell people to find you on Bluesky.

② Then, take advantage of Bluesky’s best feature: make your domain name your Bluesky handle. This deceptively simple little trick provides all the verification and trust that Twitter’s blue tick never could - even before Musk started selling them. That’s right, the ace up Bluesky’s sleeve is you don’t need to worry about anyone impersonating you. Only the owner of a domain can use it as a handle. It’s clear to all that you are who you say you are.

Get help

IMTW is brought to you by InMarketing, a strategic advisory service for senior leadership teams in B2B finance and technology. It can help you with:

?? Audit ?? Strategy ??? Messaging ? Planning ???? Problem-solving ?? Counsel

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To learn why:

③ Financial firms’s reputations will be protected until proven guilty.

④ Digital capital markets will enjoy instant settlement with digital money.

⑤ CMOs earn respect in the C-suite by demonstrating business outcomes.

⑥ High performers deserve your attention more than under performers.

⑦ Savvy investors will make a lot of money from a Trump presidency.

Visit InMarketing This Week for the rest of this issue >

About

Written for senior leadership teams in B2B finance and technology, InMarketing This Week is a showcase for news likely to impact you - delivered with insight on why it matters and ideas on what to do about it. It’s published every Sunday at six to give you a head start on the week. Read extracts?here, or subscribe to?have each full issue delivered straight to your inbox, before it's available anywhere else.