How Twilio Is Shaping Segment: Lessons Learned from the Signal Conference

Yeah, when twilio acquired segment I told my clients (I'm a consultant) that this is not likely to improve the core data infrastructure product. The deeper integration with twilio makes of course sense for twilio, but not for customers that need/want a reliable data pipeline / data broker. You can see that Ina few ways:

2019 segment launched their custom functions, a logical and useful extension to ingesting data into segment and moving event data to destinations not supported by segment. It was great.

Fast forward to now, two years later and what's the new cool segment feature? A IMO lackluster extension to personas called journeys (or recursive personas / personas with extra steps as I call it). This isn't part of product that ensures smooth movement of data, its an addon to a marketing tool... Well... All clients I work with already have marketing tools...

As a segment user this conference was a massive waste of time. If you're a deep twilio customer I'm sure it was a great conference along the lines of "here's cool new twilio stuff, which btw you might want to run through segment"

The one huge issue with Segment is their MTU pricing model. If you have lots of 'anonymous' monthly users you will be emptying your wallet into their coffers. Rudderstack is much better value for money.