👉 Last Week - Apple takes a hostage, "data-driven" is dead, no more newsletters please (+ THANK YOU)

What happened on Tech Twitter the week of June 14 - 21

Jun 23, 2020

Yo! ✌️ I’m Brett! I am a Product Manager, musician, and Twitter power user. Twitter is where all the action happens in the tech industry but it’s not easy to keep up with. I write this weekly newsletter to help people stay informed on the most important discussions happening on Tech Twitter.

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✨ TLDR

😡 Tim Cook took Hey hostage - when Apple says jump, developers ask how high. For Hey, this meant 30% of their revenue, but they didn’t stand for it.

🏗 Data-driven decision-making is lame - data-driven decision-making is a religion at big companies but maybe not at startups.

📰 We may have hit peak newsletter - with everyone writing newsletters we’re all wondering how we’re going to have the time read and money to subscribe to all of them. We’re still looking for answers.

Also - today marks the ✨1 year anniversary of starting Tech Twitter TLDR✨I had high hopes but I never imagined it would be where it is today - 1,301 subscribers (at a 45% open rate) with $0 paid advertising, utilizing an existing large social media following or email list, or forcing any to subscribe for that matter.

I’ll be saving the fanfare for the 1 year anniversary of my first post (next month), but if you want to share this out to see if we can get to 1,800 subscribers by then, I’d be forever grateful! THANK YOU for being part of the journey thus far 🙏

😡 Tim Cook took Hey hostage

Apple refused to approve bug fixes for Basecamp’s new email app unless they agreed to the App Stores 15-30% revenue share agreement. Hilariously, this happened on the same day the EU announced their investigation into Apple’s App Store practices.

DHH @dhh

Wow. I'm literally stunned. Apple just doubled down on their rejection of HEY's ability to provide bug fixes and new features, unless we submit to their outrageous demand of 15-30% of our revenue. Even worse: We're told that unless we comply, they'll REMOVE THE APP.

The battle was between the “Apple is a monopolistic bully” people and the “you signed up for this, I don’t see the problem” people. In either case, it clearly highlighted the complicated relationship between developers and platforms.

Dan Rose @drose_999

2/ Power dynamics: there’s natural tension between platform owners and developers. They share the same end-users: who owns the customer? They make each other’s products more useful: which direction does value flow? They have overlapping features: where is “the line”?

Here are a few takes I found most interesting:

Tom Conrad @tconrad

Having lived through music licensing and the early App Store in the 00’s, I’m convinced that Apple/App Dev split of 30/70 is based on the fact iTunes kept 30c for every 99c track sold. Steve liked consistency and simplicity. Truly I think that’s the reason. How fucked is that?

Yury Molodtsov 👀 @y_molodtsov

This piece from the today’s @stratechery is so well-balanced and important.

Li Jin @ljin18

The Hey vs. App Store dispute is a manifestation of Karl Marx’s ideas about the struggle between capital and labor, updated to a 21st century world in which a platform, rather than a factory owner, controls the means of production and distribution.

theverge.comHey.com exec says Apple is acting like ‘gangsters,’ rejecting App Store updates and demanding cut of sales“I thought you were supposed to wrap the threats in euphemisms or something. But it was pretty clear.”

Apple did end up approving the app in the end and vowed that it would let developers challenge App Store guidelines going forward.

Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong

Apple has a looming anti trust problem if they're going to force people to collect money through IAP (giving up 30%) to get their app to run on Apple products. theverge.com/2020/6/22/2129… Microsoft tried forcing people to use Internet Explorer if they wanted to use Windows.

theverge.comApple approves Hey email app, but the fight’s not overCan Basecamp squeeze through a loophole?

📰 We may have hit peak newsletter

Starting a newsletter seems to be the cool thing to do these days. As more follow the trend, many are starting to wonder if we’ve reached peak newsletter. This is both for free and paid - we already get too much email and there’s only so many $5-15 newsletter subscriptions we can pay for.

Ari Lewis @amlewis4

How Many People Will Pay for Your Newsletter? • I subscribe to 20+ free newsletters • Am I really going to subscribe to your paid newsletter? • A paid newsletter needs to add a lot of value and bundling can make it worth it

So where do we go from here? Substack could release a newsletter reader to make it easier to consume only the best newsletter content. Unfortunately this would defeat the entire purpose of newsletters as an unencumbered line between writers and readers.

Brett Goldstein @thatguyBG

I've signed up for so many newsletters that I'm going to need to shift my inbox to algorithmic instead of chronological.

Bundling is a popular approach that is emerging, and it’s as inevitable as the circle of life.

Rachita Kumar @RachitaKumar7

That said, We are in an unbundling phase. In media, creators are now leaving big brands, but bundling will return — creators will bundle their content into joint subscriptions. (12/n)

David Perell @david_perell

9. Build an ecosystem of influencers Jim Barksdale once said: "There are two ways to make money: bundling and unbundling." We are in an unbundling phase. Creators are now leaving big brands, but bundling will return — creators will bundle their content into joint subscriptions.

Paying $50 for 10 publications is better than paying $100 for the same 10. This get’s even more interesting when you unbundle the content from the publication. As a curator myself, I find the notion of paying for a newsletter that curates the best of other newsletters really exciting. This does bring us back into algorithmic newsfeed land but my thesis is that human curation creates trust and community in a way that algorithms cannot.

Read Ari Lewis’s deep dive on bundling for more here.

Ari Lewis @amlewis4

Bundling is the Future • The right bundle maximizes revenue for producers and gives consumers valuable content • Writers, curators, and publishers want to expand the Total Addressable Market of the industry by bundling

Web makes the point that many paid subscriptions aren’t just distractions - they “help you build a new world.” And there will always be value there.

Web Smith @web

Number "2" has 📈 demand elasticity. It may also compete with continued education, social clubs, corporate networking. Certain newsletters may improve or outright replace certain social or professional functions. Example: some of the best newsletters are communities.

The newsletter monetization movement we know today is focused around the 100 true fans concept anyway. Even if there are millions of free and paid newsletters with excellent content, everyone should be able to find 100 superfans that would be willing to pay.

🏗 Data-driven decision-making is lame

This tweet stirred up some controversy.

Brett Goldstein @thatguyBG

Naturally a combination is best, but the idea is in a vacuum, using first principles is better than using data. Henry Ford would have built a horse company if he was entirely data-driven.