Post.news Is Shutting Down
In the turmoil that followed Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, numerous users went looking for an alternative. One such alternative was Post.news, which specifically set itself up as a non-toxic home for publishers, including such big names as The New Yorker, USA Today, Vanity Fair, and Wired. To that end, Post.news rolled out micropayments, called “Post Points,” which allowed its users to access paywalled content.
Post.news seemed really promising at first and I joined as soon as I could. It had all of the usual features that you’d expect from a modern social platform. But I was particularly impressed by the more advanced writing interface that emphasized long-form content and allowed you to paywall your own content à la Substack. But after making a few posts, I stopped using Post.news altogether. Between everything I could do on Opus, Substack, and yes, Twitter, I couldn’t really find any compelling reasons to keep posting there. And it looks like I wasn’t the only one who came to that conclusion.
On Friday, April 9, CEO Noam Bardin announced “with a heavy heart” that Post.news would be shutting down in a few weeks.
We have done many great things together. We built a toxicity-free community, a platform where Publishers engage, and an app that validated many theories around Micropayments and consumers’ willingness to purchase individual articles. We even managed to cultivate a phenomenal tipping ecosystem for creators and commenters.
But, at the end of the day, our service is not growing fast enough to become a real business or a significant platform. A consumer business, at its core, needs to show rapid consumer adoption and we have not managed to find the right product combination to make it happen.
To their credit, Post.news will be rolling out a feature that lets users download their content, and users will be able to withdraw their point balance as cash until May 31. But with this news, the only remaining major Twitter alternatives remain Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. (Pebble shut down last November.)
Although Post.news was ultimately not for me, it’s still sad to see it go if only because its loss means even fewer options for networking and sharing. That said, its impending demise should also serve as a reminder — yes, I’m going to keep beating this drum — of the importance and value of building and owning your own online platform that’s not subject to the vagaries of the market.