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Sections Below
Context on Merkle's X-crossposting experiment
My thoughts on why the idea is great, execution is wrong
Microinfluencers would be a better strategy
Overall, the X-crossposting experiment is directionally correct but should be executed differently in order for it to serve its purpose.
Context
Last weekend, the Merkle team casted out that they were experimenting with X-crossposting for some large accounts. The goal is to get a few "tech influencers" to start being active on Farcaster.
A couple of accounts they've rolled the feature out for are Marc Andreessen, Packy, Gwart, Elad Gil, 0xmert, and Mic Solana (note: all opted in).
By having all their X content automatically get posted to Farcaster, the hope is that when they log on to Warpcast, these users will have a good amount of replies & notifications ready to go.
One thing I wanted to callout before I shared my thoughts is that the Merkle team didn't make this an official announcement before rolling the feature out. It was actually an observation from @slokh that the Twitter timestamps of the duplicate content were earlier than the Farcaster ones and that the t.co embed links were most likely being programmatically used by the Warpcast team.
Directionally Correct
Content and conversation has definitely hit a 2024 local bottom on Farcaster. In Q1 we had Frames and in Q2 we had Farcon to keep the fire burning. But Base's onchain summer narrative for Q3 didn't go as well as people had expected.
It's fair to say that this summer has been dry ~vibes~ wise and people are feeling a bit burnt out. There hasn't been much going on to pull in new folks on to Warpcast.
There's definitely a need to inject some fresh energy to keep the momentum going through to the end of the year. Farcaster needs more content!
Okay...so crossposting. The experiment has been live for a week, let's see how it's going so far:
For the most part, it seems that none of these users have logged back in and checked replies/notifications
The one exception being Packy who I stalked and saw that he replied to a few folks and commented on other people's casts!
Replies have been quality and thoughtful on all casts except Gwart's content. For some reason, he's being spammed with $farther
This is not to say that Marc, Mic, etc. won't respond in the future, but I think the spirit of the experiment took a hit because these users that opted in didn't engage in the first week. From what I've noticed, many casters felt that they didn't want to reply after the first few days because there was no reciprocation and it felt like they were "replying to a bot".
For what it's worth, Dan already called these points out and was fully aware that it might take time for this to even work.
So this is an experiment to syndicate their content to Farcaster. May take some time for people to start responding, but certainly the next time they open the app up they will have a full notifications feed and hopefully some thoughtful content. If "casts with no chance of reply" is how you're viewing this, i.e. it's a negative, just don't follow an account or if you're seeing recasts, mute them. - Dan
Here's the thing though...the accounts that were picked for the first wave of crossposting don't need any help getting engagement! Marc Andreessen could literally come out of nowhere, cast "hi", and get hundreds of notifications in an hour.
Microinfluencer Crossposting
I believe the X-crossposting experiment should be run with microinfluencers aka "tier 2 or 3 posters" that have proved quality on Twitter but don't have the brand name of the tier 1 accounts in the current batch.
Microinfluencer: ~10k-75k following
Why would those accounts be better to test with? Because the lesser known folks would actually have the bandwidth and desire to engage with the replies/notifications they would get. The fact of the matter is that Mic Solana and Elad Gil barely have time to interact with their hundreds of thousands of followers...there's close to nothing for them to gain. On the other hand, a micro-influencer has a lot more incentive to find new people to add to their networks.
This X-crossposting experiment needs to hit these 3 conditions for it to be a success:
Bring new & interesting content to Warpcast
Create meaningful conversations and engagement between the crossposters & current casters. Casters take pride in the high quality, friendly conversations...can this extend to newcomers?
Provide incentive and utility to the crossposters for them to spend more screen time on Warpcast (i.e. drive traffic to their own work, make friends, learn new things, etc.)
Currently, only the first condition is being met with the larger influencers.
Devil's Advocate
Now...it's worth playing devils advocate to the "microinfluencer crossposting" idea I'm suggesting. The awesome part about the batch right now is that they are Dan's friends, can be trusted, are well known, respected by most people in tech, and surely have interesting things to say. The risk is close to zero that they'll mess it up content wise. On the other hand, there's definitely a higher chance things could go downhill with microinfluencers. However, if we could get a couple of active casters to vouch for x person (in terms of character & content), then perhaps that could be solved?
The second thing to mention is that discovery of these folks is a lot harder. The Merkle team would have to do way more work in terms of searching, sifting through existing content, etc. However, once again, if the current community could nominate people they think would be a great fit then I think this can be solved again.
For example, I would 100% vouch for my friend Jon Wu.
Later today, I'll make a sourcing cast and see if we can get 10 folks queued by the /toc community.
And lastly (and arguably the biggest filter) is that these accounts can't be totally new to Farcaster. They'll have zero following, no one will see their content, etc. Ideally, just like the current batch, the microinfluencers already are on Farcaster and used to post at least a little back when they first started.
If this crossposting experiment is able to work itself out in the next few months, it could be a huge unlock to bring a wider variety of content and people to Farcaster...not just from Twitter but even other social platforms 👀
My point remains no matter if it's Reddit, Instagram, or Twitter: the goal should be to work with the microinfluencers for crossposting. They can be trusted to bring quality content and are hungry to expand their networks, engage with new people, and create meaningful conversation around their brand. It's tough for the big guys to stick around no matter how much they want to support.
That's all for today's post! Let me know what you think about the crossposting strategy in the TOC channel...who do you think should be in the next wave of crossposters?
See you all next week, hope everyone has a relaxing weekend :)
- YB
