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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#331

Post by thombat »

mikkergp wrote: post #143
Waterluvian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I admire about Elon (which is saying a lot...) is that for whatever reason, he's ready to bet the farm over and over. Whether he's some genius tactician or an impulsive moron, he just bought Twitter and is poised to drastically alter it. "flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems" indeed! Forgive me for this analogy but it's in the news: Imagine if NATO just said one day, "y…

Speaking of impulsive, I didn't realize he fired the top exists for-cause blowing up their golden parachutes: https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-fired-twi...

Matt Levine has an interesting take on this [0], basically that nothing in that Musk claims of their behaviour meets the specification of "cause" in their employment contracts, and further that the golden parachutes are a good thing in that they prevent the C-suite from being focused on their continuing salary:

"The basic problem with Musk’s efforts to walk away from these severance agreements — beyond the lack of actual arguments — is that if he can stiff these executives then no golden parachute is binding. The point of a golden parachute is that a CEO with a golden parachute will sell his company to a buyer whom he doesn’t like, if that’s what is best for shareholders. If the buyer can stiff the CEO on the parachute payments because they don’t like each other, then no buyer will ever pay severance, and no CEO will ever trust it."

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20221031165639/https://www.bloom...

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#333

Post by rhaway84773 »

concinds wrote: post #203
drawfloat wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not a higher barrier to entry – you can read and respond freely. It's a higher barrier to having a good experience, which I can't think of many successful examples of to be honest.

> respond freely You can already filter out non-verified mentions and replies. Presumably that's not going away, and will be used by far more people after this change. It very much is a barrier to entry.

But the verified mention is no longer a verified mention. It’s a paid mention.

And the people most likely to pay to ensure that their responses are seen broadly are narcissists and people who want to sell you stuff like their latest get rich quick scheme, newsletter Subscription, etc.

Actual verified users will dwindle in comparisons and the value of filtering out non “verified” responses will plummet.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#334

Post by chatterhead »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #259
chatterhead wrote: post #236

This is off. Should be: $1.99 for every user with optional $7.99 upgrade to validated ID/Blue checkmark. No ads. Way fewer bots. Focus completely on functional/feature engineering and dismantle advertising system. Branch out into VOIP/Email services. Total communications platform instead of "social media" should be his direction.

They make much more than $2/user from ads. Since it’s already not profitable I don’t see how it’s going to work

The cost to acquire each of those users is more than $2/user because the cost of their advertising infrastructure.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#335

Post by xtracto »

paxys wrote: post #322
dan-robertson wrote: post #285

The dynamics on Twitter are quite weird. There’s a small number of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is an important part of their work or life. If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software ($100 pa seems pretty cheap there). Indeed maybe media publications should be paying for…

That's the core problem with this approach. Elon and others have the idea in their head that Twitter is a social graph where people come to interact with each other, and everyone is relatively equal. So every user paying $X/mo to solidify their place in the graph makes some conceptual sense. In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. A tiny percentage of users are creators while the vast majority are c…

I always felt Twitter as "old man yells at cloud" kind of communication. I've never seen proper "content" created (like pinterest, tik tok, etc). Most of the "content" I see are the asinine multi-post threads and text-pictures notices from angry people/companies.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#336

Post by UncleMeat »

memish wrote: post #177
UncleMeat wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine making pricing decisions for a 40 billion dollar business on a fucking whim based on feedback from a famous author. I guess this is in character, given that Musk likes to price things with meme numbers already.

Imagine thinking he made the decision based on that.

He's owned Twitter for a few days. He threw out $20 and then adjusted it down to $8, seemingly based on feedback. Did he already know that $8 was the appropriate amount? Was there already some internal analysis done that he is just piggy-backing on? It certainly seems like Musk is making big changes literally moments after arriving on scene.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#337

Post by lupire »

yamtaddle wrote: post #299
mikkergp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such... odd behavior. For sure Stephen King who has a net worth of $500 million dollars does not mean "the price is too high". If Elon is successful, even I will read the business school case study on it, because it flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems and... well just about everything. The only way this works is if Elon's internal processes are way different from his public persona…

Some blue checks need Twitter (mid-level youtubers, for instance). Some don't (Stephen King, for instance). In either case, Twitter needs the blue checks because they are, to a large degree, the reason non-blue-checks visit and engage with Twitter. I can see someone like Stephen King being annoyed at having to pay anything when his presence is probably helping Twitter quite a bit to begin with.

Stephen King needs a blue check because Twitter is terrible at deleting imposter accounts.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#338

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

dan-robertson wrote: post #285

The dynamics on Twitter are quite weird. There’s a small number of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is an important part of their work or life. If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software ($100 pa seems pretty cheap there). Indeed maybe media publications should be paying for…

> If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software

I think this completely misunderstands why social media products like Twitter are successful.

Those journalists (or gamers, or comedians, or porn stars) that you're arguing should be considering $9 a month as cost of business, they are the content creators and the only justification for a business like twitter having any value at all. Principally, twitter is a network, and these users are the highly connected nodes of that network. How fast will superconnectedness decline without them? Superexponentially.

The people with blue check marks aren't your customers or clients: they are your product.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#339

Post by MarcelOlsz »

schleck8 wrote: post #219
memish wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be both. Pay to verify, get paid for creating content. "This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587505731611262976

What kind of content is being created on Twitter that warrants being paid? Reddit works flawlessly without that in longer form

Reddit the same site that deletes tons of comments and bans subreddits?

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#340

Post by yamtaddle »

memish wrote: post #177
UncleMeat wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine making pricing decisions for a 40 billion dollar business on a fucking whim based on feedback from a famous author. I guess this is in character, given that Musk likes to price things with meme numbers already.

Imagine thinking he made the decision based on that.

I guess it is possible he floated the $20 knowing someone very-famous would object and he could counter—either misreading the room badly, or else as a deliberate insult—with $8, which was what he wanted all along.

5d chess and all that.

Or he's impulsive and tweets dumb shit basically all the time. It might just be that.

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