"My Twitter experience isn't as great"

Hi all, it’s Kurt. Even former Twitter executives are heading to Mastodon. But first...Today’s must-reads:• Apple is working on adding touch [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hi all, it’s Kurt. Even former Twitter executives are heading to Mastodon. But first... Today’s must-reads: • Apple is working on [adding touch screens to Macs]( in a major reversal. (Steve Jobs was not a fan of touch displays for laptops) • Apple is also planning to make its own [custom displays]( in mobile devices as early as 2024 • Layoffs continue: Flexport [cut 20% of staff](bbg://news/stories/ROBW6QT1UM0W), Verily [cut 15%](, and Carta [cut 10%]( Just setting up my Mastodon For the past few weeks, I’ve watched a growing number of people I follow on Twitter slowly migrate to [Mastodon](, a competing social network that looks a lot like Twitter. It’s easy to understand Mastodon’s sudden rise in popularity. The service is growing because a lot of people are unhappy with Twitter Inc.’s new owner, Elon Musk, who paid $44 billion for the company in late October, and has quickly alienated key stakeholders, including users and advertisers. Whether it’s the way he has [treated laid off workers]( or his seemingly haphazard policy decisions, a lot of people just don’t think Twitter is Twitter anymore now that Musk is in control. They’re looking for an alternative, and Mastodon is the perhaps the next best thing. Mastodon’s appeal has even attracted a few unlikely visitors: Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone both created accounts on Mastodon in recent weeks. “I’m kinda tinkering with it,” Stone says. “I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or what, but my Twitter experience isn’t as great [recently]. I don’t know if it’s the people that I follow aren’t tweeting anymore or what’s happening.” “Tinkering” or not, the fact that Twitter’s founding team signed up for Mastodon says something about the viability of both networks. For Mastodon, it’s a sign of credibility. For Twitter, it’s a potential reason for concern. The guys who built Twitter are suddenly wondering if a better version of the service exists somewhere else.  Part of why Williams and Stone joined Mastodon is because of Medium, the blogging company that Williams founded a decade ago and where they both sit on the board. On Thursday, Medium announced that it has set up an online community on Mastodon. Medium Chief Executive Officer Tony Stubblebine, another O.G. Twitter employee who was at the company when it was created, is convinced that Mastodon’s open-source tech structure is the future of social networking. Evan "Ev" Williams Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg “I don’t think of this as an experiment even,” Stubblebine says of Mastodon. “We think Mastodon tipped over and that all authors need to be there.” The way that Mastodon works is that anyone with a little time, money and technological knowhow can create an “instance,” or community, on the Mastodon network. Each instance is unique and has its own set of rules and guidelines, but members of separate communities have the option to interact with one another. The idea is to offer a collection of social networks that are interoperable, but aren’t controlled by a singular person or company, like Twitter is. If you don’t like the rules in a particular instance, you can join another one that better aligns with what you care about. When Medium announced its own “instance” on Mastodon, it became one of the first corporations to do so. (Mozilla, the foundation behind the FireFox browser, also runs its own instance.) Medium will use its existing corporate resources — including site reliability staff and trust and safety employees — to support and police its Mastodon community. “I love the idea of an open and distributed — yet connected — network,” Williams said via email. Innovation in social networking has suffered over the past decade because “the major platforms have had too strong of a network effect for new ideas to get to critical mass,” he added. “Now we are at a unique point in time when people are actively looking for alternatives, which is exciting.” Shortly after Elon Musk took over Twitter, Stone briefly considered trying to build his own “new” version of Twitter. He quickly remembered that the key wouldn’t be developing new technology but building up the network of users. “The hard part is developing a massive follow graph over many, many years,” he says. Mastodon is attracting a few key users. We’ll see if others choose to follow. —[Kurt Wagner](mailto:kwagner71@bloomberg.net) The big story Elon Musk might never be the world’s richest person again: A numerical look at the [unmaking of a $340 billion man](. Get fully charged Microsoft said it is shifting vacation policy to give US workers [unlimited time off](, matching a system already in place at its LinkedIn unit. An overlooked software flaw is opening up US aviation authorities to new scrutiny after a tense year. The Federal Aviation Administration is still [trying to determine what went wrong]( in an outage that prompted a nationwide flight stoppage. Adobe had been trying to acquire design firm Figma for years before co-founder Dylan Field and [the startup finally accepted](, according to a new filing. Bloomberg TV examines the [possible risks]( surrounding the artificial intelligence sensation ChatGPT. Follow Us More from Bloomberg Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead event returns to Davos on Jan. 17 for conversations with leading CEOs to map out a strategic blueprint for global business in 2023. [Learn more about Bloomberg Live at the World Economic Forum here](. Get Bloomberg Tech weeklies in your inbox: - [Power On]( for Apple scoops, consumer tech news and more, every Sunday - [Game On]( for reporting on the video game business, delivered on Friday - [Cyber Bulletin]( for exclusive coverage on the shadow world of hackers and cyber-espionage, sent every Wednesday Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Tech Daily newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. 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