Initial Impressions of Post.News

With turmoil and controversy continuing to roil Twitter, a number of users and media companies have been exploring alternatives. Among the most promising of these is Post.News, which appears to be hiring and growing rapidly. A couple of days ago there were 20,000 active accounts and another 200,000 folks on the waitlist, but these numbers must be obsolete by now.

I joined Post expecting to find a Twitter clone. What I found instead was something quite different, with features that could reshape the entire ecosystem of online news and information distribution. There is potential here to build a platform that is ad-free, profitable, and can compete head-to-head with the likes of Substack and Spotify for content creation and delivery.

Two of Post’s features are especially powerful—the capacity for long form writing using markdown, and the introduction of a convertible internal currency for micropayments. Media companies (and anyone else for that matter) can post articles directly to the platform, and charge nominal amounts to read beyond a snippet view should they choose to do so.

Here’s an example from Reuters, which seems to have jumped in with both feet:

Click through, and you’ll see the entire article displayed, just as it would be on the company’s own website. Some articles you can only read by paying with points, the platform’s internal currency:

When I was approved to join I found myself with an initial balance of 50 points, with the option to buy more. Accumulate enough points and you can cash them out at a conversion rate of a penny each. Sounds like a trivial amount, but it is not inconceivable to me that people now distributing content to a relatively narrow audience of subscribers on Substack may choose to make their work more widely accessible in this manner.

Of course, points can also be used to reward content creators more routinely. This is already happening with considerable frequency. Law professor and author Jen Taub keeps getting her tip jar filled, and can’t seem to spend the points fast enough to deplete it.

The fact that Post has a convertible internal currency will draw attention from Federal regulators, who will want to know whether there are enough segregated funds to finance a rush of withdrawals. That is, Post can’t really use funds raised by point sales to finance operating expenses. But if it decides to take a cut of payments made to media companies and other businesses, it might be able to sustain an ad-free platform.

While Post has created a system in which content creators are rewarded (and not just with likes and reposts), Twitter seems to be moving in the opposite direction, charging creators for generating the content on which the platform depends for its existence. This exchange between Stephen King and Elon Musk captures perfectly the difficulties that Twitter will face if it tries to tax producers rather than consumers of content:

So here’s a bold (and probably reckless) prediction: If Twitter is to thrive (or even just survive), it will have to become a Post-clone.