Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#101

Post by rebeccaskinner » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 4:45 AM UTC

johnnyo wrote: post #7

angulardragon03 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally you'd also get ad-free access to Twitter itself, which I would certainly consider paying for. Considering the annual per-user revenue is ~ 12USD [1], this seems like something that would be financially interesting to Twitter. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/forecast-of-the-day%3A-twitt...

The average across all users is $12, but I suspect the average over people willing to pay for Blue is likely higher than that. It's can be a Catch-22 in some cases. The same people most willing to pay to opt-out are the ones most coveted by advertisers.

For some users this might be true, but not for everyone- whether the advertisers realize it or not. I refuse to buy anything from an ad. If I want to buy a widget and happen to see an ad in the search results for the widget, I'll then refuse to buy the widget because I saw an ad for it. I block every promoted tweet, and enable as much ad blocking as I possible can on all of my devices. I am probably worth a negative amount to advertisers because seeing their ads actively makes me disinclined to buy the product.

On the other hand, I realize that services cost money to build and maintain, and if the subscription came with ad-free (and data-mining free! "ad-free - same great ad-tech data-mining flavor" doesn't count) I would definitely subscribe.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#102

Post by diebeforei485 » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

I'm not sure who this is for. The features don't interest me much, and I use Twitter quite a bit (though mostly not to tweet things myself).

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#103

Post by cstrat » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 5:15 AM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #89

Andrex wrote: post #48

- Doesn't remove ads on Twitter itself - Is not compatible with any news paywalls (they just strip ads out of already free-to-access articles) - Edit Tweet isn't Edit Tweet. It's an option to delay your tweets by 60 seconds. After that, you cannot Edit Tweet. "Slow Tweet" is more accurate but probably less marketable. Even if I were still using Twitter, and even though I support journalism when I can (paywalls for a…

I would pay this to kill the promoted tweets. I know it sounds super tin-foil hat but in the days or weeks leading up to Twitter's earnings reports the promoted tweets are absolutely out of control. This year I took screenshots of my feed where out of 14 tweets 10 were promoted!

Yeah I hate the promoted tweets, I just try to block them all... hoping that one day I will have blocked them all.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#104

Post by partiallypro » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 6:03 AM UTC

I signed up for it, and immediately cancelled. The ability to undo tweets is a bit of an annoyance after a while, and none of the features really justify the $3/mo price tag for me. If they charged me $3/mo to make my feed ad free, that would have been worth it. This...not so much.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#105

Post by partiallypro » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #57

I just signed up not because I'm particularly interested in the Twitter Blue features, but because I believe in paying for things I use. I also want Twitter (and other companies) to start reducing their dependency on advertising dollars, which come with a lot of perverse incentives. If people are looking for in on the web client, it's in the left menu under "More".l

>Twitter (and other companies) to start reducing their dependency on advertising dollars

Yeah, except Twitter Blue does do that at all. They are just double dipping. You still get just as many ads as before.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#106

Post by cercatrova » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 6:23 AM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #104

I signed up for it, and immediately cancelled. The ability to undo tweets is a bit of an annoyance after a while, and none of the features really justify the $3/mo price tag for me. If they charged me $3/mo to make my feed ad free, that would have been worth it. This...not so much.

You can just use uBlock Origin and use mobile Twitter as a pinned app to block ads. That works for me.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#107

Post by groby_b » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 6:28 AM UTC

... and still no edit feature.

This might seem like a tweet soundbite,but it goes to the root of the problem - twitter develops its features in a vacuum and actively refuses to listen to its users.

I'd also argue that they picked a horrible price point - it's too expensive for most twitter users, and too cheap for the ones willing to pay. The demographic of people willing to pay for twitter is not extremely price sensitive, and going for a lower price point will only insignificantly expand it. Going for a higher price point with more value add (remove "promoted tweets" garbage) would be significantly more appealing.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#108

Post by anshumankmr » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 6:40 AM UTC

ushakov wrote: post #64

paulpauper wrote: post #54

The Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, Reuters, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Insider and The Hollywood Reporter. Seems like a good way to push a ideological/political agenda, too.

their TA primarily uses Twitter

The amount of propagandists on Twitter is mindblowing. They removed Trump but they have people like Chen Weihua, some actual Taliban recruiting accounts, the BJP IT Cell, tankies (who support DPRK/CPC or unironically think communism is better)

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#109

Post by nuker » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 9:22 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #25

manningthegoose wrote: post #3

As someone who was an initial skeptic when this was first announced, I really appreciate what twitter is trying to do with Blue, especially around direct payments to publishers. Any step to get the internet off of the ad-based data-harvesting revenue model is ultimately better for almost all parties.

But, it's not direct payment to publishers. It's indirect via twitter. You can pay publishers directly already by buying subscriptions. Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels from twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional journalism. This is mostly my hot take just based on the press release, but color me dubious. Local news is struggling nationwide and this doesn't feel like a solution. It feels like s…

> Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels from twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional journalism.

To what?

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#110

Post by otrahuevada » Wed, Nov 10, 2021, 11:45 AM UTC

webmaven wrote: post #86

otrahuevada wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook makes maybe about 30USD a year from any given profile: > https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a212721... Being relatively optimistic about Twitter's size, and assuming they're just fantastic at it, Twitter might make what, half of that? So for 3$ a month you need about half of the userbase to be on board for data munging to no longer make sense as a business model. I do wonder how high that m…

> So for 3$ a month you need about half of the userbase to be on board for data munging to no longer make sense as a business model. I think you might be assuming that advertising revenue is evenly distributed among users.

Twitter Blue is being offered at 3$