Twitter vs. X: Product Lessons For Startup Founders

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter and rebranded it as X, the platform has added new features, implemented a few major UX modifications and made some controversial changes to its algorithm. So what can founders interested in product design learn from all this? In the first episode of our new series The Breakdown, YC’s Tom Blomfield (co-founder of Monzo) and David Lieb (creator of Google Photos) take a closer look at X to find out what lessons there are for founders who want to build the next great consumer product.

00:00 - Coming Up
01:22 - Twitter vs X
06:12 - Why were these changes made?
09:25 - Learnings
11:12 - When is Twitter helpful?
14:58 - Why did the name change?
18:20 - Rebranding
22:27 - Outro

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Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) -
00:00 - Coming Up: Value metrics for popular products Twitter vs X
01:22 - Twitters shift from left leaning to right leaning content
02:37 - Product managers optimize content for engagement
06:12 - Product design tools help solve problems
06:45 - Facebooks newsfeed change, Instagrams engagement decline
09:18 - Learning from TikTok's Algorithmic Feed
10:35 - Entropy content on Twitter
11:12 - Ukraine war, UK election
11:31 - Twitters importance in debunking fake news
14:58 - Mass market consumer products do not match taste
15:23 - Changing name and Getting the verb
16:10 - Bump cofounder and Monzo name choice explained
18:10 - Best time to rebrand, bring meaning, ownership
22:26 - Outro: Deep product delve reviews

[TheConsciousEntity]

Instead of clicking the "For you" tab, I default to the "Following" tab. Conversations that are tangential to topics I'm interested are usually at the bottom on posts of people I follow.

[makenvaega]

I used to be one of the few among my friends who used Twitter heavily. (Twitter isn't big in the Philippines) I used it to follow tech and business stories, sports, and some key personalities. But it reached a point where I always felt bad/angry/sad every time I used the app. And I found myself arguing with random people on the net.

So I deleted my account and deleted the app from my phone. Couldn't be happier.

At least in my case, short-term boost in engagement, but ultimately a churn. Exactly what they said.

[geovanygameros]

This is a such as excellent content. Please continue with the series!

[CarletonTorpin]

As a non-Twitter user, this was useful. I'll remain a non-user. :)

[mikegitkos]

Great video, and this covers a lot of the issues with modern social media that I’m actively working to solve.

The main concerns:
1. How do you connect people with similar interests?
2. How do show users the content they want to see and interact with?
3. How can you monetize the platform without impacting the consumer experience?

I can’t see how it’s done with an engagement-based feed.

[rafaelribasdetoni]

David Lieb's videos are always very very good

[Short..]

Youtube shorts turned into this, it used to be great at introducing me to content I would love, now its just mass produced slop ie attention baiting, fails moments, skits, pets, literally ripped clips of shows without any edits, random yters calling themselves a "historian"

[MBAnoBrainer_GMATPrep]

I particularly liked the brief review of the history of social networks. Thank you for the episode.

[TheConsciousEntity]

Grok has access to tweets so you can ask it for details about current and recent events. I use it whenever some breakthrough happens in machine learning to distill and then expand on the topic, but it works on all sorts of news.

[johannesseikowsky]

Love this series! Looking forward to the next one :). Maybe Youtube as a product to analyse?

[RefaGhaznavi-hdhp]

Useful keep adding videos like this on different categories

[YouBetterThink]

I started using X a few months ago, it's the best social medium for me. Viewpoints from all sides, also some extremes. Glad to have all viewpoints represented, not just liberal ones

[ezebado]

Thank you guys for the talk and analysis. It was really helpful and waiting for more videos like this !

[amirsync]

I checked analytics for X and it's growing incredibly.

[sydneyshields]

Tom is based, less pessimistic about YC. I think it's important YC remembers that they may be accidentally alienating their best future founders with the more uncritical videos (even though they are inspiring!).

[fceruti]

Terrible take on Grok. It's clear that the future of user interaction is AI intermediated, so you either give one of the most unique databases to a third party and buy their AI services, or build a strong in house AI. It's a perfect fit if you consider the following kind of use cases (or prompts): "Build me a 7 minute video with all the news in sports in my local area"

[haveyouseenitthough]

The name and brand change are not talked about enough as a massive unforced error
Brands would kill to have such a strong brand
Now it’s this soulless thing called ‘X, formerly Twitter’ with a first draft logo

[beepdotboop]

Bluesky currently feels like the twitter of 2010s which is really nice. X has become a cesspool

[george_davituri]

I think to avoid clickbait don't follow over 1k pages to get more relevant content that you might want to see, even this number is huge. Small joke twitter sounds better than 'eX' 😃, but X is still good to visit sometimes.