43,000 K-pop Fans Can’t Be Wrong
Twitter Spaces and the Power of Niches
Yesterday, over 43,000 K-pop fans joined a Twitter Space (live audio service on Twitter) about K-Pop.
What is K-pop, you ask? It stands for Korean popular music. K-pop first gained attention in the US when Psy released his song “Gangham Style” in 2012 and his music video became the first Youtube video to exceed 1 billion views (I dare you to not click the video below).
K-pop fans are obsessive fans and flock to follow their favorite bands and artists. I believe a very popular artist named Bam Bam joined the Space to promote his new album about to drop on June 15th. Bam Bam, who I had never heard of before, has 8.3 million followers on Twitter!
On the same day of the K-Pop Twitter Space, a Twitter user who was bored while cooking dinner, decided to launch a Twitter Space about Bitcoin.
Soon over 22,000 people joined including several prominent VCs and the biggest surprise was the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele joining as well.
When hundreds of millions or even billions of people are connected, even small topics can gather a decent crowd. Niches suddenly become very large.
I believe Twitter Spaces represents a new era for Twitter and will be a catalyst for a spike in engagement and new user growth. The ease of use of live audio combined with the interests, people and topics you care about cannot be overstated. With live audio on Twitter, you don’t need to worry about how you look, how your environment looks or where you are. You just need your phone, and you can do it anywhere, at any time.
For example, I was recently able to easily host a Twitter Spaces with Andrew Walker of Yet Another Value Blog and Glass House President Graham Farrar on interstate commerce restrictions on cannabis and almost 200 people joined in to participate.
Twitter Spaces is also just the beginning in terms of new services. Superfollows, Tipping, subscriptions, newsletters, and more are rolling out in mass later this year.
A year ago, I wrote a big report on Twitter and called it a value stock. I have written a few updates on Twitter including my most recent in April that said investors should stop focusing on Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey and instead focus on the head of Product Kayvon Beykpour. The company is executing and iterating at a level that would have astonished me a year ago.
If you are worried about what Twitter reports in its next quarterly report, you are missing the forest for the trees. If you are obsessed with Jack Dorsey, how he dresses or his obsession with Bitcoin, you are missing out on the fact that Twitter is fundamentally changing and becoming more powerful before our very own eyes.
The next upswing in Twitter is upon us and Twitter Spaces is powering that climb.