I'm conflicted about this move. I was listening to Reply All the other day and they mentioned platform diversity and I've seen a number of discussions on here around platform diversity. Twitters ability to buy a feature like this makes it harder to compete with. It benefits writers in a way that it adds in-demand functionality to an existing popular platform but also harms writers and consumers because of the rising demand of platform diversity.
Twitter acquires Revue
191–200 of 270 posts
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#192Excellent 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…
100% agree with the business model switch. I think products have a natural business model and for Twitter it's not advertising. I think it took time for the market to have appetite to pay for more subs, but it's here now. I really think this takes Twitter to the next level.
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#193You would have to be a complete idiot to try and build your revenue on something owned by Twitter. They will shut you down at any time, for any reason, with no recourse.
In the new era of monopolistic common carrier platforms, you have to BUILD INTO YOUR BUSINESS PLAN what happens when you get screwed by, say, the Apple App Store, YouTube, or Twitter, et. al. It's a business risk, just like fire or flood. You have to have a contingency ready to go at a moment's notice. By example, Parler didn't.
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I am a bit cynical about that Spyware-aaS companies like FB would stop spying just becouse you paid them. So am I. The problem is that the paying members are also the same members that are most valuable to advertisers (because they have disposable cash and are probably 'power users' of the platform), so there is an incentive to 'sell them' to advertisers as well.
If we get enough global privacy laws with sufficient teeth, it may be possible for paid models to offer a low risk alternative to spying where you would be constantly at risk of fines for poor decisions on how you implement your data collection. It would be quite a change in the way the internet works financially, but it seems like companies would be likely to adapt to it were it to happen.
The trouble with paid social media is that the value is in the network, and becomes much less attractive if lots (maybe 90% of users) don't pay, and hence are removed from the service.
You could do freemium, but you'd make a lot less money (FB would anyway, maybe this would work for Twitter) without reducing your support costs.
So yeah, I'm not sure this would work in the current setup (even global privacy laws with teeth will move from individual level ads to cohort level ads). The trouble is not that subscription services are worse, it's that ads are super profitable if you're a really big service.
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#195Why is the Revue model preferable to a blog with a tip jar and RSS? I understand why Twitter wants in on a lucrative game, but I don't understand the value proposition for writers or readers. I struggle to see how, as a regular person on the internet, I benefit from a "public square" that will hijack my brainstem to maximize engagement, sell my attention and browsing habits to 3rd parties, and suspend my account with…
It's preferable because people don't want to have to click through multiple screens to do PayPal/Visa Checkout authentication to give somebody $3. Nobody knows what RSS is either. Even back in mid-00s, I would sometimes struggle to add a blog to my Firefox feed (this was pre-Chrome). On some sites you'd click the RSS button and it would work. On other sites clicking it would display incomprehensible XML markup, causi…
also some would only put a snippet in their RSS feed rather than the whole article
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#196Will this be Twitter's Instagram?
Or
Will this be Twitter's Tumbler?
My money is on the latter.
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
> How do they schedule the shows to account for the odd lengths?
Certainly up through the 90s the 'big ticket' and imported shows started on the hour or :30 and everything else slotted around that. Secondary programmes often started at :50 or :15 as a result.
https://www.transdiffusion.org/content/uploads/2016/10/19991...
If timings were really awkward they would pad five or ten minutes with a short filler about hot air ballooning or pottery making or somesuch
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t thin substack crowd would trust Twitter with their content.
I think Twitter would be okay if the history professor with the $1m Substack comes over to them and people like Glenn Greenwald stay at Substack though.
History professor with 1m substack? Is this a specific reference?
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#199> Starting today, we’re making Revue’s Pro features free for all accounts and lowering the paid newsletter fee to 5% ...and there goes Substack's entire business. Overall, this is great for writers however. The missing component to Substack was the discovery/social mechanism. From a strategic perspective, it's easier to bolt on newsletter sending than it is to build a new social network. So this was always a huge ris…
Not exactly. The Twitter brand isn't looking so hot right now. I think it's the same thing with Slack, Slack only exists because Microsoft teams is made by Microsoft. I swear to God it's mostly a placebo effect, but you're like oh yeah we're using slack we're the cool kids now. Many companies will have a single breakaway team that uses slack just to feel cool. But if $10 a month makes a developer happier she might pr…
> The Twitter brand isn't looking so hot right now.
Can you explain? I use Twitter daily (hourly) and haven't read anything that lessened my opinion of them. Are you talking about censorship / Trump stuff? Personally they have not gotten on my bad side with any of that.
> Slack only exists because Microsoft teams is made by Microsoft
I'm also not sure what you mean by this. Microsoft Teams exists because of Slack.
Re: Twitter acquires Revue
#200Earlier 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?)
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…
> She said during the news, rather than ads, you saw the hosts smoking and chatting.
Sounds like she was viewing the direct feed or something. There is a documentary called "Spin" which was recorded footage of the downtime between ads. You can see, for example, George H.W. Bush chatting up Larry King. There is footage of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and others. The people being recorded don't seem to realize that the satellite feed continues during a break or downtime.