I would prefer to pay for Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: I would prefer to pay for Twitter

#41

Post by hagope » Sat, May 03, 2014, 11:31 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #13

You would pay for Twitter, but you would not outbid the advertisers, who unlike you are willing to subsidize the people who won't pay for Twitter. Which is just a complicated way of saying that if Twitter charged for access, it would charge substantially more than you'd expect them to.

Not so sure about that one... today Twitter only earns $1 per user per quarter (as of Q1'14) ... if they were to charge for a premium ad-free experience, they could get away with $1 per month, which would be 3x what they make in ads...

Re: I would prefer to pay for Twitter

#42

Post by Spockulus_Rift » Sun, May 04, 2014, 12:01 AM UTC

janvdberg wrote: post #35

When discussing Twitter I always keep this thing in mind http://paulgraham.com/twitter.html Twitter is not a service it is (more) a protocol. So it that sense people can and should use it anyway they want. And paying for it doesn't/shouldn't change that. I have a certain way of using Twitter that makes it valuable for me. But a lot of people I know seem to be shouting without listening or engaging. But hey, if that w…

favorite is pretty much https://mobile.twitter.com/pm/status/437316921310969856

Re: I would prefer to pay for Twitter

#43

Post by nickm12 » Sun, May 04, 2014, 4:18 AM UTC

It's very easy to be friends with someone on Facebook but not follow them. In the upper right of every post is a menu that lets you unfollow them. At least today, the concept of "friend" is more about access permissions than "following"

But ultimately Twitter vs. Facebook is a very dull argument. Yes, the design of the platform makes a difference, but ultimately any individual's experience is going to be dominated by the people they interact with. Just because a person tries platform X and doesn't like it doesn't mean that everyone else is going to have the same experience.

But neither of these would be what they are as paid services. Their primary value depends on the vast number of users and that just doesn't happen with paid services.