Tweets

@koomai I slept in today too. 🤙

@GreggJaskiewicz @Audioguyjacob Ended up getting coffee, going for a walk, and calling my sister.

@DCoulbourne Don’t forget to get bananas.

@brunoraljic Nice. 👍

@Merott Hahahaha. Sweet.

@MichelleAPriest I love the idea of more wall art!

@volkandkaya Nice! I love making things faster.

@melwyntee Nice! How’s it going?

@CreativeConflab Love seeing all the blooms.

@KingDogDad @StaceyBoehns @treehouse 👍

@harisenbon79 AT THE SAME TIME?! 😮

@stephenjudeso I enjoyed that episode!

@hugo__df I’ve been liking Last Dance too. 👍

@DamonJentree Omg: we have popcorn ceiling too.

Is it brutal to remove?

@dbchhbr Whoa! That’s a lot of activity

@mubashariqbal @downsizedus @Korihandy Nice!

@WhosPiloting Hahaha. How’d it turn out?

@bgardner @WiseArts Love it.

@jonnyburch My articles are generally pretty short; I stop when folks who read the drafts tell me they’re too long. 😄

@AndrewAskins Sweet. That’s good for you, and the dog! 😉

@frontendben @statamic Sweet! Did you make a site?

@tiggreen Whoa. I just eat cereal and drink coffee.

@noahwbragg @supportmanHQ Nice!

@jamesmills Just drinking coffee and walking around town. Had a nice phone call with my sister. 👍

@jbrooksuk Nice. I love Sunday walks.

@jackmcdade Nice!

@tnorthcutt Whoa! All I’ve done is drink coffee and go for a walk.

@fredrivett @yahaHQ Nice. Ended up getting a coffee and going for a walk. 👍

@tillkruss You didn’t stop by to say hi? 😉

@ratiovernon Whooooooh!

@nickswan Nice! How’d it go?

@theSamParr @zenfounder Digging it! 👍

I feel like I’m getting to know you way better. Love hearing people’s stories.

I went and grabbed a coffee.

Now I’m walking around a park, and spending time with @zenfounder and @theSamParr.

Hey everybody.

What’s your plan for today?

@michaeldyrynda Nope

@ByAnyOtherName_ Hey! 👋

@jeffSARRIS @bgardner Yeah! I’m down. 👍

@jeffSARRIS @bgardner Wow Jeff. This multi-camera shot for a remote show is brillaint! Well done. 💯

@KyleTibbitts @adampatterson @tcampbelltweets There are two sides to that coin.

On one side, we have employees who are experiencing the calm and reduced anxiety of not having a 2-hour commute every day.

I think they'd be willing to trade less efficiency for that calm. 😉

@KyleTibbitts @tcampbelltweets I’m not so sure about that.

Again, humans have an incredible ability to adapt.

Old paradigms need to shift and make space for a different way of working.

My co-founder and I built our company completely remotely, and collaborate a lot. 😉

@KyleTibbitts @tcampbelltweets I think what you’re missing is how remote workers adjust.

I started working from home 1-2 days a week in 2010. At the time, I came to learn I wasn’t as productive at home

However, I kept tweaking it until I found a flexible system that worked for me (coworking).

@mrbrettkelly luv u 😘

@frontendben Haha haha. So much conspiracy on Periscope!

Predicting the future: what the world will look like in the next 5 years https://www.pscp.tv/w/cZf0nzM4NTU1MXwxeW9KTWF3emthREpRpmN6ifM_d0SuUoxM3JHFV6578wBoW5JarPFSzrN2NnM=

RT @mijustin: We’ve seen this every time one platform gains dominance.

Amazon, Facebook, Medium.

That’s the *play*. Destroy the open ecos…

I’ve been enjoying @mrbrettkelly & @cfoandrew’s podcast lately.

If you like the other bootstrapped podcasts (@buildyoursaas, @artofproductpod, etc) you’ll like this one. 👍

https://overcast.fm/+G3OrfnfWE

RT @AsiaMatos: This is exactly why I believe in founder-generated content. Even if you suck at it, tell your stories. Tell the world about…

@AsiaMatos Yes!!! 💯

@nbashaw @robwalling Baremetrics’ Open metrics will give you a sense of revenue churn:

https://baremetrics.com/open-startups

For example: Baremetrics is at 3.5% and Convertkit is usually around 4.9%

@nbashaw @robwalling Monthly (revenue churn).

http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-226-everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-churn-but-were-afraid-to-ask

@nbashaw 3-5% is pretty good, even for B2B.

“Try to get revenue churn under 10 percent. And, frankly, you want to try to push it to between a 5 and 8 percent range.” - @robwalling

I know some b2c membership sites that have 23% monthly churn (but just grow like crazy).

@nbashaw 🎯

@CasJam @robwalling 💯

RT @DKThomp: Before we get into the findings, your COVID caveat emptor:

There is so much we don’t know about how this disease spreads and…

@websmyth @damcclean @statamic Nice! I like it.

@officeofsarah But what do you do for podcasts?

RT @mijustin: It's no wonder so many creators are going *back* to paid newsletters and selling direct to customers.

Email is the last bast…

@ianlandsman Joe Nobody won’t get listens, no matter what platform he’s on.

Anchor (now owned by Spotify) already democratized the creation + distribution + ads part.

93% of those podcasts “podfade.”

And Anchor’s automatic ads platform has been a failure; the majority of folks see no rev.

Somehow, ~10.5 million people were able to find Joe's show every week, using the open standard + iTunes.

That's doesn't mean RSS (or Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Overcast) can't be improved; but it's incredible how well it's working already.

It's ironic that analysts are assuming Spotify's vertical integration will somehow be the death knell for Apple Podcasts and RSS when Joe Rogan built his empire purely on those platforms (and 0% on Spotify).

190 million downloads/month. Hosted on Libysn. Distributed on iTunes.

@WhosPiloting @TransistorFM Exactly.

RT @gilesvangruisen: @mijustin My take is that the inevitability is not that they *must* consolidate but that they will *attempt* to, and i…

It's not surprising that many of the most successful bootstrapped businesses were built on top of email (MailChimp, ConvertKit, Campaign Monitor, Postmark, Litmus).

Open platforms create opportunities for small businesses.

@rustybrick @mattmcgee @MordyOberstein @YoungbloodJoe @methode @bartoshe @googlewmc @JohnMu @g33konaut @TransistorFM Nope; we do it all.

You could (technically) handroll your own RSS feed; just make sure you modify it for the podcast spec.

Stealing this:

1. Podcasting is built on an open web platform: RSS.
2. The platform is better open (than closed).
2. No one company should have an oversized influence over its future.
4. It's better for podcasting if we improve the existing RSS spec.

https://twitter.com/dylanatsmith/status/1233404153923280899

@rustybrick @mattmcgee @MordyOberstein @YoungbloodJoe @methode @bartoshe @googlewmc @JohnMu @g33konaut @TransistorFM In order to distribute to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc... you need to generate a podcast-ready RSS feed + have a place to host the audio files.

Every podcast technically needs hosting. 👍

https://transistor.fm/upload-podcast-itunes-apple

@noahwbragg @derrickreimer @r00k Hahaha. My son changed my name on my iPhone ages ago and I have no idea how to change it back. 🤣

@podcastharry @ArcticSquire @robinwarren @TransistorFM @jonbuda The folks at bitcast do comments on timeline (but not private):

https://bitcast.fm/

RT @fredrivett: we don't need *less* open standards, we need *more*.

the web is already too controlled by the big players. our data should…

@ianlandsman I think (and hope) that the tide is starting to go back the other way.

Got out of the house, and spent some time with @derrickreimer and @r00k.

Helped me clear my head. Feeling grounded. ✌️

@ianlandsman When a single platform (Youtube) gets enough market share, they can snuff out the other options (iFilm, Atom Films, Metacafe).

This is the “winner takes all” narrative that’s so popular in tech.

@chris_hawk In the old days, when you needed to own a printing press, way less folks had the ability to make a living independently.

RT @joshtab_: Good read about bootstrapping!

BUSINESS IS LIKE SURFING by @mijustin

https://justinjackson.ca/surfing

Thank god Hotmail wasn’t able to “lock down” email and force everyone to send and receive msgs through their platform.

But, I’m sure MSFT would have loved it!

(Can you imagine how profitable you’d be if you could control all electronic messaging?)

Some things shouldn’t owned.

@ianlandsman They didn’t lock down the web!

They couldn’t control it. They had all of their add-ons, but folks just wanted the web.

I was on Compuserve; I just closed down their portal as soon as I was dialed in, and opened Mosaic.

The web was the first time in history where individual creators got some leverage.

It gave us the power to distribute our work, without gatekeepers.

When a single company controls distribution, we lose that leverage.

Thank god AOL wasn’t able to “lock down” the web, back when they controlled the primary portal.

I’m sure they (and their shareholders) would have moved it though!

Some things shouldn’t be owned or controlled by a single party.

@hugo__df 💯

Fuck I'm mad.

Comedians used to rely on HBO and Netflix; now they can start an email newsletter and sell their special directly to fans.

Thinkers like Sam Harris used to rely on publishers; now he can start a free podcast and upsell fans to his private podcast.

Open and independent is 👍.

Folks keep assuming that content creators want their work to be supported by dynamically inserted ads on a central platform.

Look at what YouTubers have to put up with. Lower and lower ad rates.

Increasingly, creators are looking for more sustainable ways to make a living.

It's no wonder so many creators are going *back* to paid newsletters and selling direct to customers.

Email is the last bastion of the free and open web.

(Guaranteed if any company could have locked it down and controlled the ecosystem completely, they would have).

For these platforms, content is a commodity.

When they can pay artists less for music, they will.
When they can pay vloggers pennies, they will.
When they can pay podcasters less, they will.
When they can pay writers nothing, they will.

We’ve seen this every time one platform gains dominance.

Amazon, Facebook, Medium.

That’s the *play*. Destroy the open ecosystem and control all the economics.

Shareholders like monopolies.

Initially, a closed-platform will entice creators with the promise of more exposure, more money, more targeting, more analytics.

But invariably, as soon as they have sufficient leverage, they’ll apply downward pressure on creators. They’ll squeeze the ecosystem for every drop.

@ianlandsman Ok. We’ve also learned the lessons from the newspaper industry! 😜

Newspapers let Facebook/Goog take over a big chunk of their business, and they got fucked.

Now, NYT is taking back control: using the open web + subscriptions.

@tmeire_ @tylertringas Do you forget how many RSS readers there were?

Even today, there are hundreds.

RT @nbashaw: A call to arms

https://divinations.substack.com/p/the-open-podcast-ecosystem-is-dying

@tmeire_ @tylertringas Search “email” in the App Store and tell me how many apps you see. 😉

SMTP / webmail services like Zoho, Proton, Outlook all have millions of users.

In a closed ecosystem, the spoils almost always go to the reigning platform owner.

In an open ecosystem, the benefits are more evenly distributed.

Don’t think creators haven’t learned lessons from the record industry giving control to iTunes, or newspapers giving control to FB.

Tired of these tired takes that say “inevitably, open standards like podcasting must one day be consolidated into a single platform controlled by a megacorp.”

Fuck that!

Millions of people read sites based on RSS every day. No one controls the CMS, monetization, or client.

@ianlandsman I think (and hope) this is different than YouTube.

Youtube didn’t start on an open platform.

NPR has tons of top shows, and won’t give up their control to Spotify. Tons of other publishers feel the same way.

People are learning the lessons from the record industry.

@ianlandsman What % of podcasts do you think relies on ads?

How is podcasting different than blogging, which also involved ads?

What % of email newsletters have ads?

@tylertringas “Most media.”

You can’t just ignoring blogs and email newsletters, which are massive forms of media.

Why does it have to be inevitable that podcasts get capture when blogs and email newsletters have been resilient for so long?

@ianlandsman Podcasting is way more like email newsletters, which is still works on the open platform (even for “huge businesses”).

Nobody owns the sending of email (MailChimp, Sendgrid, Postmark, Convertkit), email accounts (Gmail, Hey) or email clients (Spark, Newton, Canary).

@DCoulbourne @ianlandsman 🎯

@ianlandsman Actually, it’s a mix of email, radio, and blogs.

(And, you’re ignoring thousands of use cases I see every day)

@tylertringas Explain. Blogs and email are still platform agnostic.

Nobody owns the sending of email (MailChimp, Sendgrid, Postmark, Convertkit), email accounts (Gmail, Hey) or email clients (Spark, Newton, Canary).

Nobody owns the CMS (WordPress, Statamic), the hosting (WPengine), etc

@nbashaw In a closed ecosystem, the spoils almost always go to the reigning platform owner.

In an open ecosystem, the benefits are more evenly distributed.

As soon as a platform controls distribution, they can apply downward pressure on creators. They can pay them less.