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Twitter acquires Revue

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Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#181

Post by figgyc »

Am I the only one who sees Revue, Substack etc. as a niche market? I can see why it appeals to Silicon Valley types/HN readers; after all this website is a content aggregator so it makes sense we all have a shared interest in written work. That said I think that the blog "industry" is dying more than it is growing.

To me, media seems to be trending towards quick, consumable, visually stimulating content, ie YouTube, TikTok and the like. The reason such content is more engaging and profitable is because it's a lot easier to turn it into a feed: one does not scroll through a newsletter for hours on end, and long form content tends to be the type that you put more thought into reading instead of simply moving on to the next piece.

Advertising runs on eyeballs but subscriptions do not, and it feels to me like Twitter seem to think that creating a well integrated platform to drive more Twitter discussion is a good idea, but really to me it feels like blogs and Tweets run perpendicular to each other: anyone who's read a decent amount of Twitter conversation knows that deeply thought out and sensible it is not.

Maybe they see being able to be "in" conversations about paywalled content will incentivize people to pay up, and will subsequently start pushing Revue content on people's feeds to try and create such a mentality? Or maybe Twitter don't care about making Revue "part of" Twitter and just think it's a growing market worth capitalising on. Only time will tell.

In a way it sort of reminds me of podcasts. They work well only for a group of people who have the time to consume long content, and while it works as a large niche, I can't see it growing into a Twitter-scale mass market, so I wouldn't trust it to be around for a particularly long time.

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#182

Post by ajvs »

offtop5 wrote: post #159
heimatau wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, the only solution is a fairly complicated decentralized structure with economic incentives for all.

Even then you have gatekeepers for hosting and payment processing.

Exactly the problem cryptocurrency was created to address.

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#183

Post by patrickaljord »

siruva07 wrote: post #7

Excellent acquisition. Twitter will definitely compete and take marketshare from Substack with lower fees from 20% to 5%. I hope this acquisition is actually a stepping stone for Twitter to become a much better service. Twitter could absolutely become a paid service and move away from ads as its business model. No political ads to worry about. No interference with the product experience. And believe it or not, if I u…

There is no way in hell Twitter is going to give up on ads any time soon. Maintaining a service like Twitter costs hundreds of millions of dollars in infra and workers and it's highly unlikely that Revue could cover those costs. Even if by some miracle, Revue manages to pays the bill, it would be impossible to justify to shareholders giving up on such a huge source of revenue that is ads.

tl;dr twitter giving up on ads ain't happening

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#184

Post by organsnyder »

larrik wrote: post #167
sharperguy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, the BBC channels are still ad-free. Shows like The IT Crowd or Star Trek just play through continuously without ads. Between shows, they have a short ad break advertising other BBC shows and live broadcasts that will be playing at a later time, but nothing paid.

IT Crowd isn't BBC, though...

I think their point is that shows that were produced with ads in mind simply play through with no gaps (similar to how ad-free streaming services play them).

How do they schedule the shows to account for the odd lengths?

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#185

Post by organsnyder »

TimPC wrote: post #164
RankingMember wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The temptation to increase margins is high no matter what. yep, I remember when cable tv was ad-free (because who would've dreamt people would be ok with paying a subscription fee while still getting ads shoved down their throat?)

cable tv always had ads because the cable subscription goes to an infrastructure provider not the content provider. If the infrastructure provider was the content provider there is a substantial incentive to reduce or eliminate ads a la Netflix and Amazon Prime which largely restrict ads to brief promotions of other content on the network.

Those infrastructure providers pay a ton of money to the content providers. I've heard that ESPN is the single largest cost of most cable plans.

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#186

Post by throwawaysea »

siruva07 wrote: post #7

Excellent acquisition. Twitter will definitely compete and take marketshare from Substack with lower fees from 20% to 5%. I hope this acquisition is actually a stepping stone for Twitter to become a much better service. Twitter could absolutely become a paid service and move away from ads as its business model. No political ads to worry about. No interference with the product experience. And believe it or not, if I u…

I am very fearful of where that goes. Twitter and Facebook delete lots of conversations that offend their progressive political sensibilities. Even if people paid for these services, they would still be operating within those biased chambers as a result. I would rather have someone independent like Substack win this space instead of seeing these companies take it all just because of their financial warchests and the power of network effects making them immune to competition.

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#187

Post by dumbfounder »

siruva07 wrote: post #7

Excellent acquisition. Twitter will definitely compete and take marketshare from Substack with lower fees from 20% to 5%. I hope this acquisition is actually a stepping stone for Twitter to become a much better service. Twitter could absolutely become a paid service and move away from ads as its business model. No political ads to worry about. No interference with the product experience. And believe it or not, if I u…

The second you charge you cut out a large chunk of your audience. The second you cut out a large chunk of your audience you give up what makes Twitter useful. Facebook has the same issue, if only 10% of your friends are on there, why would you want to be there?

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#188

Post by davidivadavid »

bachmeier wrote: post #48
siruva07 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does an edit button not make sense for a service like Twitter? How would it be abused? Deleting and reposting hurts and would eliminate engagement statistics. From a product experience, edited tweets, similar to Slack, could show an "(edited)" that when clicked on let's a user see the version history. That way, it can't be abused, but does allow for minor typos (e.g. https://twitter.com/sir/status/135373794972946…

Because rather than retweeting "I hate the KKK" you just retweeted "I support the KKK".

So keep the original message when you retweet. That doesn't seem like an insurmountable amount of conceptual complexity.

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#189

Post by dan-robertson »

sharperguy wrote: post #126
DavidPeiffer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone who was an early adopter of satellite TV. She said during the news, rather than ads, you saw the hosts smoking and chatting. That sounds so much more pleasant than what we have today. When cable had no ads, did all programs just run continously? If a channel did a special where they played standard TV programs designed for over the air broadcast (18-23 minutes/episode), did they just play them consecut…

In the UK, the BBC channels are still ad-free. Shows like The IT Crowd or Star Trek just play through continuously without ads. Between shows, they have a short ad break advertising other BBC shows and live broadcasts that will be playing at a later time, but nothing paid.

I wouldn’t really call the intermission an ad break as they’re not really trying to sell you something. The main purpose is as a buffer between shows with slightly different timings or with live shows that won’t finish at an exact time (or may overrun like sports matches). You get the same on the radio too though they often have a short news briefing in the gap as well. Very occasionally they will have too large a gap to fill and read a poem.

Re: Twitter acquires Revue

#190

Post by FalconSensei »

mrisoli wrote: post #116
Tenoke wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what is worth, those users also earn them much lees revenue, so the cost can be lower, too.

It's a matter of perception, especially in poorer countries like Brazil, why would anyone pay money for something that was previously free? Good example of this is WhatsApp, IIRC it was free for a year then charged $1 for lifetime access, people still scrambled to get around the app(download illegal APKs, or recreate accounts).

Exactly. There are 2 problems with requiring payments in Brazil:

1 - Most people will not want to pay. They will spend a whole day/weekend trying to find a free alternative, even if it costs just a couple bucks.

2 - Many, many people don't have credit cards. You would need to support boleto or debit. Generating and managing boletos adds cost, so you would need to increase your fees not to lose money

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