Many of you might be wondering, "What's going on with Hootsuite?"

To be blunt, they're in a bad place.

Last year, they laid off a ton of staff and their CEO suddenly departed.

The current CEO, which was hired last month, is a "turnaround specialist".

Which means this might be their last chance.

https://biv.com/article/2023/01/hootsuite-lays-7-staff-names-irina-novoselsky-new-ceo

Full disclosure: I used to be a significant shareholder in Hootsuite.

However, I sold all my stock in June 2021.

If Hootsuite can't even offer a free tier, things are looking very bad for "free" social media in the future.

I have a strong suspicion that subscriptions are going to be the norm across the board.

If Big Social itself is moving towards a subscription model, I don't think they realize what kind of hurt they're inflicting upon themselves.

This is where open source makes things incredibly difficult for them.

A few months ago, @reiver and I were literally considering, "We should build a Hootsuite for the Fediverse."

And then we thought, "Nah, Hootsuite could be the Hootsuite of the Fediverse."

Seeing the news today: nope, Hootsuite can *never* be the Hootsuite of the Fediverse.

It's not even a possibility now.

The question every proponent of Big Social should be asking:

How do you compete with free?

Because that's what the Fediverse (mostly) is.

This is where someone pops up and says, "BuT rUnNiNg A sErVeR hAs A cOsT!"

Yeah, and Internet access has a cost too. But that's not what I'm factoring in when I say "free".

What I really mean is: what's the price of the software itself?

Well, let me tell you: I can download Mastodon right now and install it on as many servers as I like -- entirely free!

Now let's consider actual real world cost because I don't disagree that cost is a factor.

However, *free* is also a factor -- and free affects cost.

I'm starting up a fully-managed Fediverse hosting service with @reiver called #SpaceHost.

I'm very aware of who our competitors are: Twitter Blue and Meta Verified.

If you compare Twitter Blue with Meta Verified, #SpaceHost blows both services out of the water in terms of sheer functionality.

And why is this? Because the Fediverse is free and open source.

Now here's the further consideration. Both @reiver and I know that for the Fediverse to survive, devs and community server admins need a way to procure funding.

So part of building #SpaceHost will be options for crowd-funding. Making it super easy for everyone to pay their bills.

Will Twitter Blue or Meta Verified do that? Nope!

Big Social can't compete with the Fediverse. If they try, it becomes an existential challenge.

Meta is happy to copy TikTok, Telegram, Snapchat, and BeReal.

They *can't* copy the Fediverse's federation function.

If they could, they would have allowed federation long, long ago.

(And no, IFTTT is not "federation".)

Twitter will allow you to archive your personal data. But will they allow you to make a back-up of Twitter itself?

Again, this is where the Fediverse out-competes Twitter.

Will any of Big Social allow you to go ad free?

Not even if you pay them!

Even if you shell out money for Twitter Blue or Facebook Verified, they're going to still send you ads.

But on the Fediverse, no ads are seen. At all.

And that's the standard experience for everyone.

The Fediverse out-competes Big Social yet again.