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X, sorry. It’s called X now. Stupid.

I’m going to be calling it Twitter here.

Never mind the name-change and the questionable man in charge, Twitter has implemented a few notable and ground-breaking features on the platform over the past few months. 

These changes have made me entirely rethink what Twitter is, how it can be used, how it should be used, and what the future might hold.

Let’s discuss! 

The right ingredients?

Let’s consider Medium for a moment. 

Medium is a fantastic blogging platform for a few reasons:

1. Medium has a large built-in audience, ready to tap into with your stories
2. It’s free but offers a membership for $5 per month
3. The member program allows readers to read without ads, while writers earn for their stories, without relying on ads.
4. The platform is dead-simple to understand, easy to use, looks nice, has a high domain authority, and is an established place in the online sphere. It’s trustworthy.
5. Medium has thousands of amazingly talented creators.
6. It’s a community with social features, like claps, comments, mentions, and more.

Now let’s compare this to Twitter:

1. Twitter has a large built-in audience, ready to tap into with your tweets and long-form stories
2. It’s free but offers a membership for $8 per month
3. The revenue-sharing program allows creators to earn a cut from the revenue (be it only large creators with a high number of monthly impressions right now)
4. The platform is dead-simple to understand, easy to use, has a high domain authority, and is an established place in the online sphere. Trustworthy may not be the correct term right now.
5. Twitter has thousands of amazingly talented creators.
6. It’s a community with social features, like likes, comments, mentions, retweets, and more.

You see where I am going with this?

Distinctions?

Those are some undeniable similarities. Twitter and Medium were even founded by some of the same people, although this doesn’t matter much in this discussion.

BUT — and this is important — what had distinguished Twitter from Medium in the past (short-form content, free, no revenue-sharing model) are no longer distinguishing factors.

Of course, some things are still vastly different on those two platforms. Medium holds the candle in terms of formatting for articles, reading experience for long-term content, and blogger-friendly sharing options.

Twitter isn’t slowing down, though. 

Elon Musk mentioned that X should and will become a platform for “everything”. That includes long-form writing & blogging in my book. 

Advantages?

Twitter has a lot of things going for it. While Medium writers complain that growing an audience is a tough task, Twitter seems to be a growth machine for many. 

Contrary to Medium, you can sprinkle your long-form content in with your short tweets, or even spaces. It gives you options. All of which can lead to viral hits, rapid growth, and opportunities.

Twitter also has a massive audience. Not just large, massive. And Twitter is one of the most recognizable brands in the world… or was before Elon put his X on it.

Disadvantages?

Let’s be real, none of us know where this Elon-ship is headed. Could be great. Could be catastrophic. 

Therefore, predictions are… well, hardly anything to go by.

Nevertheless, those recent additions like subscriptions and revenue sharing make me think that Elon and the remaining Twitter team are planning on turning X into a content creation paradise. One that pays its top creators and benefits from the ad model and how creators impact it. 

Sort of like YouTube, but for words.

The bottom line

It’s hard to tell, I know. And I am torn on Elon’s expertise in this field. 

In the best-case scenario, Twitter becomes the biggest all-in-one platform on the internet, paying its creators, and helping them grow. 

In the worst-case scenario, Twitter dies with its rebranding.

We’ll see.