On June 24, 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis announced he was running for president.
Instead of hosting a big event or joining a talking head on one of the mainstream media outlets, he joined Elon Musk on a Twitter Space.
If you’re not familiar, a Twitter Space is an online audio-only call where the host controls who can talk.
Elon Musk spun up Space and invited David Sacks (VC at Craft Ventures) along with DeSantis. There were issues with it from the start. The audio was choppy. Before ending the Space on Elon’s Twitter there were over 300k people in the room and an estimated 1 million trying to get in (unconfirmed).
David relaunched the Space on his Twitter with a smaller reach. And everything worked then.
Worst idea ever?
Many commentators on the left chastised DeSantis and called the idea idiotic. They joked about the poor audio quality.
Pod Save America was perhaps the most vocal about the failure. Most of them worked for President Obama in one capacity or another while in the White House. They provide interesting takes on what happens behind closed doors in the White House with a progressive spin.
But they were surprisingly off base this time.
They laughed about the audio quality, called Sacks a VC fanboy, and joked about the audio-only format. They barely mentioned DeSantis taking questions from the audience for approximately an hour. When was the last time a Presidential candidate has taken questions that long? And these were unvetted questions from the audience, filtered by David Sacks.
There were failures in the announcement of course. It did not go smoothly but it was a people-first approach.
The Pod Save America crew confirmed Twitter is one of the best and most far-reaching content distribution channels available today, only after calling Twitter a failing business and labeling Elon Musk as an incompetent leader and engineer.
I would have liked to have seen more analysis of DeSantis’ message and his response to questions. The DNC said they are not organizing presidential debates for the 2024 election already.
But they missed (or ignored) the biggest thing: DeSantis did not rely on mainstream media to get his idea out.
The Breakfast Club shared a more unbiased take on the strategy of their show. They are also more progressive in their views as a whole. They called out the media for focusing on the botched audio instead of what DeSantis did. He circumvented the mainstream media and went straight to the people.
Was it a good idea?
Hard to say. But I don’t think it was a terrible idea as many have said.
Publications and people are spreading it like crazy because of the audio glitch. Pod Save America confirmed that the live attendees is not the number you care about, instead, you focus on total reach over time.
Sacks’ Space had 4.1 million tuned in.
Mario Nawfal had 6.1 million tuned in for his Space which listened to the Sacks’ space and commented on it.
Twitter is a fantastic distribution channel. The best for sharing a message and content today. While the Twitter Space was a good idea for going straight to the voter.
But the video component is important. It’s a lot easier to connect with someone visually than audibly.
Remember John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon because of video and his ability to impress the voters visually.
I think this is the first director to the voter messaging that we’ll continue to see in the coming months and years with more of the conversations moving to podcasts, etc. By moving away from the mainstream media, I hope we’ll get deeper conversations around specific topics instead of short sound bites.
Time will tell.