Post News, the a16z-funded Twitter alternative, is shutting down
Post News, a microblogging site that emerged in the days after Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, is shutting down just a year and a half after launching in beta.
“At the end of the day, our service is not growing fast enough to become a real business or a significant platform,” Bardin said. “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.”
Post was backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and tech commentator, but the platform never disclosed how much it raised. Silicon Valley journalist Kara Swisher was an adviser to the company.
Post’s strategy was to harness Twitter’s reputation as a virtual watercooler for journalists, then build on that further by creating a new way for publishers and writers to monetize. Instead of subscribing to various different publications, Post users could purchase individual articles from certain partner outlets.
Despite Post’s closure, Bardin said he thinks that the company proved something about the different ways in which digital news outlets can monetize. He wrote that Post “validated many theories around Micropayments and consumers’ willingness to purchase individual articles.” The platform also allowed users to tip writers for their work.
