“Fellow Journalists (and Our Academic Friends), It’s Time to Leave Twitter,” read a headline in the lefty American Prospect, whose editor at large, Harold Meyerson, asked the rest of us, “Do you really want to discourse on a medium owned and operated by Elon Musk?” He later urged, “We need an alternative and we need to take a walk from his.” (By the way, have you heard of Mastodon yet? Because you may be hearing more about it soon: “The great Twitter exodus begins,” declared a Daily Mail headline. Call it blue-check havoc, with Twitter’s media and media-adjacent denizens trying to process where all of this is headed and pondering whether Twitter will actually cease to exist as an essential town square and integral component of their professional lives-not at all an unreasonable question given the early signs of VIPs and advertisers heading for the exit. But it also hit upon something bigger, a sense of ominous uncertainty that’s coursing through the media world right now thanks to Musk’s rapid and anarchic Twitter transformation. The Twitter tutorial was an opportunistic marketing stroke from Substack, whose cofounder Hamish McKenzie once worked for Musk at Tesla. Step two: Make sure your Twitter bio has a big fat link to your Substack, which “makes subscribing extra clear for your followers.” Maybe even take it to the next level, like who now goes by the Twitter name “SUBSCRIBE TO MY SUBSTACK.” Step one: Link your Substack and Twitter accounts so that your followers on the latter platform are automatically directed to your account on the former. “If you’ve been lucky enough to build a follower base on Twitter, and you’ve ever thought about forging a direct link with them that you control via email, now might be a good time to start a Substack.” Next came a handy guide for “moving relationships” off of Twitter. “Twitter is changing, and it’s tough to predict what might be next,” the message began. On Halloween, the fifth day of Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, an email landed in the inboxes of people who subscribe to Substack’s company newsletter.
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