[deleted]
Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
111–116 of 116 posts
Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
#112I 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.
No, that's not quite correct. If we measure dependency as the proportion of income coming from something, then this still reduces dependency, albeit not as much as I'd like.
More importantly, this is going to introduce a whole new kind of thinking to people who work on the consumer side of Twitter. Previously, impact on ad revenue was the only financial metric they'd have to think about. That makes many optimization questions appear simple. Introducing other kinds of revenue complicates the calculus, allowing better decisions to emerge.
Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Isn't that what they're already doing? Except the payer is the advertiser instead of the platform itself via the subscriber.
If you've noticed a lot more paywalls going up it's because the era of clickbait is actually dying. Serious newsrooms have always hated it and shriveling ad revenue has finally tipped back towards subscriptions being the most viable path to profit. Content farms and their SEO game is far less valuable than it used to be.
Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can pay publishers directly already by buying subscriptions But that's not how most of us access news. We look at sources like Twitter, Hacker News, Facebook, Google News for links to articles. Subscribing to a single website doesn't work in this model.
Why wouldn't it work? You simply subscribe to a publisher you are valuing.
If I subscribed to every publisher I valued, I'd pay more than I pay for Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and Disney+ combined!
I think if the music industry can come out with a 1-subscription-fits-most model, I'm sure the journalism industry can figure out how to evenly distribute a modest $5-15 subscription fee.
Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is already illegal if you are in California and you can call your representatives and tell them to support the Unsubscribe Act to make it illegal nationwide. House link- https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3953 Senate link - https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/207...
OK but for the ~88% of Americans who don't live in California the point stands, at least today.
I've mentioned this before: switch your address to a California one, cancel now that you're a Californian, optionally switch it back to your proper address.
Worked for me with several publications.
Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
#116Is the WaPo subscription full or is it more like Apple News where you only get access to a couple headline articles and have to pay even more beyond news+ for full access? just looked it shows me $5.99 a month for wapo add on. If so might be worth it for me even though I don't use twitter. The rest I think are mostly available on news+ Full bloomberg on apple news is $34.99 a month, though they do have more free arti…
If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can get a full WaPo subscription for $3.99/month.
It works great for me on my Mac, less so on my iPad when following links in Twitter. The Twitter browser view doesn't seem able to handle logging into Amazon, then reporting success to WaPo so I can read the article. I think it works OK if I remember to open the link in Safari.