Last week I learnt that the Linkedin account of the writer and investor Aniruddha Malpani had been suspended (the term Linkedin used was permanently restricted). The cause ostensibly seems to be his constant criticism of a couple of online education companies in India. I haven’t read his writing and therefore have no opinion about it. This post about something we have explored for a while now, control over access to your followers, given that your audience is now your capital.
Dr. Malpani has in effect lost his LinkedIn audience. He has a substantial Twitter presence as well, which is where he seems to have shifted his writing. But he has as much control over his Twitter account as his Linkedin one – he’s simply hoping that the former is more tolerant.
The one place he has been able to express his thoughts on the Linkedin suspension is on his own website where he has been writing for about eleven years. He also has a newsletter. It’s not clear what service his newsletter uses (I’m not signed up to it) but it might make sense to use a self-hosted one like the ancient PHPlist. One hopes that he treats his newsletter and his website (via RSS) as canonical.
This tweet in response to the news says it as well as anyone could.
Own your audience – via email – only viable way to build a brand & business.
If you rent your audience from another platform, you’re a serf – a tenant farmer, with no long term assets..
cc: @vivekk
— Prasanna K (@prasanna_says) July 22, 2020
As we saw Gary Vaynerchuk say in his book Crush it!, your blog is your home; treat social media as your vacation homes.
Also see: Building a censorship-resistant website.