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A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

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Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#11

Post by badclient »

ghshephard wrote: post #5

The element that techdirt overlooks, and that I think they did their community (and themselves) a disservice by not mentioning, is the privacy element. Because selling your personal details is a (relatively) invisible intrusion (unless the provider really screws up, ala Beacon) - there is a significant cost to the user (that cares about privacy) that is not visible to them. App.net is aligned only with the users from…

Have app.net people clarified if they would be okay if the service only had 10,000 users at its stabilization point?

I know you'd be okay with it but so far, we don't have much from them stating the same. The default of course is that a service that peeks at 10,000 users is headed to dead pool. This is a bit different with 10K paid users but that is still not much in terms of providing financial security to the company to not require funding or other creative ways to monetize.

So my question is simple to app.net folks: if two years from now your service has 10,000 paid subscribers AND you know that that is the peak, will you be content running the company?

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#12

Post by illinx »

"It wants money from those users, and all things being equal, those users want to keep their money. So their goals are actually diametrically opposed."

By this standard, aren't the goals of every party in a transaction where money changes hands "diametrically opposed?"

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#13

Post by chimi »

Why don't people who donated to app.net at least get an account to use the service? They paid $50 and they don't even get an account? In a way, by paying $50 or more, they are committing themselves to pay an unknown, perhaps greater amount to actually use app.net.

$50 is a lot of money. Why don't funders get an account?

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#14

Post by eykanal »

Following the model from the article:

In the fee-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the users.

In the ads-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the advertisers, (3) the users.

By removing the advertisers from the equation, a lot of resources are freed up to address the needs of the other two parties. It's kind of strange to say that "the company" is a party being serviced in this manner... they're asking for cash, and people are giving it to them for a service. Yes, they have needs that require resources (think administrative assistants, HR, sales, etc), but these people all exist to help service the user. To that extent, the majority of the company is now existing to create a better experience for the user. Their argument is that this is significantly superior to the model where a significant portion of the company exists to service advertisers, and not benefit the end user.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#16

Post by eridius »

Point 1 is complete hogwash. Users don't want to keep their money. Money is worthless if you don't spend it. Users want to get equivalent or better value for their money. If App.net wants the user's $50, the user wants to get at least $50 worth of value from App.net. So yes, their economic incentives are definitely aligned. If App.net wants to get more than $50 from their users in the future, then they damn well need to provide more than $50 worth of value to their users.

And Point 2 is pretty bad as well. Yes, you can't degrade the service so badly that users leave. But you can still degrade the service to a certain extent. Since the users aren't paying anything for it, they don't expect much more than $0 worth of value from the service. So you can end up with a pretty bad user experience in the name of satisfying your advertisers.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#17

Post by j45 »

Nothing is ever free. Either we are buying a product, or we are the product.

In the real world, things cost money for businesses to stay open and sustainable.

I'll say it again, in a free system, we are the product that's sold to advertisers.

If I had to pick one, I'd like to be able to pay for such an experience. It's preference and I look forward to seeing how it goes.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#18

Post by wmf »

chimi wrote: post #13

Why don't people who donated to app.net at least get an account to use the service? They paid $50 and they don't even get an account? In a way, by paying $50 or more, they are committing themselves to pay an unknown, perhaps greater amount to actually use app.net. $50 is a lot of money. Why don't funders get an account?

As the site says, the $50 is pre-paying for an account.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#19

Post by wmf »

samstave wrote: post #3

The service should be pay to publish, free to consume. You should let people follow anything they want for free, but if they want to turn on the ability to publish content into the service, then they pay

Agreed. What I see most people using Twitter for is effectively advertising anyway, so let those people pay to keep the service running since they're clearly getting marketing value from it.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#20

Post by chimi »

wmf wrote: post #18
chimi wrote: post #13

Why don't people who donated to app.net at least get an account to use the service? They paid $50 and they don't even get an account? In a way, by paying $50 or more, they are committing themselves to pay an unknown, perhaps greater amount to actually use app.net. $50 is a lot of money. Why don't funders get an account?

As the site says, the $50 is pre-paying for an account.

Am I reading it incorrectly? It says, "You'll be committing to prepaying for a full year of 'member-level' service."

That doesn't sound like, "You get a year of service."

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