Twitter is gonna crash and burn way sooner than I though.
Agreed! I don’t know anything about business, but the company will surely implode in the coming days. It’s as if Musk and co. put zero though into this.
Twitter Blue for $8/Month
201–210 of 1001 posts
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#202A lot of people aren't groking what this means, even on tech and startup savvy HN. Naval and Balaji said it well:
Charging for the blue check moves it from a status symbol to a utilitarian one.
It elicits shrieks because it’s more about leveling the playing field than making money.
https://twitter.com/naval/status/1587523978456748033
The blue checks wanted to abolish billionaires, in the name of equality.
The billionaire will end up abolishing the blue checks, in the name of equality.
roughly speaking: blue checks are about status and tech billionaires about startups. It's old money vs new money.
Old money wanted to kill new money. New money is wiping out the status of old money.
The blue check actually arose as an anti- impersonation tool. Twitter was forced to implement it after complaints.
But people who are impersonated tend to be "important". So it became a status symbol. Especially for writers.
The one form of equality a journalist will always resist is the idea that everyone is now equal to a journalist.
But that's what universal verification does. Everyone who needs one can pay for a blue check. Bots get taxed. Twitter makes money. Establishment journos hardest hit.
Further reading
1) @sriramk on social networks as games: https://a16zcrypto.com/social-network-status-traps-web2-lear...
2) @eugenewei on status as a service: https://eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree with most of this, but: > Paying $8 [...] At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter Really? That seems completely contrary to my experience. In every online community I've seen, a higher barrier to entry has always been positively correlated with the quality of the conversation. Not saying there won't be downsides to this, but I very much doubt a lower quality of conversation will be one of them.
But it's not a higher barrier to entry – you can read and respond freely. It's a higher barrier to having a good experience, which I can't think of many successful examples of to be honest.
> respond freely
You can already filter out non-verified mentions and replies. Presumably that's not going away, and will be used by far more people after this change. It very much is a barrier to entry.
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree with most of this, but: > Paying $8 [...] At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter Really? That seems completely contrary to my experience. In every online community I've seen, a higher barrier to entry has always been positively correlated with the quality of the conversation. Not saying there won't be downsides to this, but I very much doubt a lower quality of conversation will be one of them.
But it's not a higher barrier to entry – you can read and respond freely. It's a higher barrier to having a good experience, which I can't think of many successful examples of to be honest.
Every commercial product and service is an example of that.
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#205Unlimited conspiracy theories and Russian trolls - free
Your own bullshit detection skills and the habit to verify/cross-reference all incoming information - priceless.
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking of impulsive, I didn't realize he fired the top exists for-cause blowing up their golden parachutes: https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-fired-twi...
That'll be a fun half-decade of lawsuits...
One thing he seems to have estimated is the motivations of other wealthy folk he tries to take (or deny) money from.
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#207It's funny how quickly the conversation has jumped from "Twitter will be a bastion of free speech" to "$8/mo is a fair price to pay for prioritizing your speech over others". Power to the people indeed.
Verified users are already boosted in replies and search. That's been the case for many years. The only change is that since verification will require payment, boosting will require that same payment. It's a complete non-story.
The difference of course being that what used to be a painstaking verification process is now bypassed by anyone with $8/mo to spare, if they choose to do so.
It is in fact not a non-story, since obviously this changes everything about how "verified" users should be considered in your feed (as nothing more than pay-to-play, where before there was at least a facade of curation).
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#208Blue checkmarks are not just about verification and extra features. They’re a status symbol. They mean you are cool and notable enough to deserve one according the shadowy and mysterious Twitter checkmark committee. If they become a commodity that anyone with a little money can buy, they lose a big part of their appeal to the average person.
> If they become a commodity that anyone with a little money can buy, they lose a big part of their appeal to the average person.
this is basically how it operated before, except with political bias
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#209A lot of people aren't groking what this means, even on tech and startup savvy HN. Naval and Balaji said it well: Charging for the blue check moves it from a status symbol to a utilitarian one. It elicits shrieks because it’s more about leveling the playing field than making money. https://twitter.com/naval/status/1587523978456748033 The blue checks wanted to abolish billionaires, in the name of equality. The billion…
"This new thing is surely all about me" – tech billionaires
Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month
#210"Half as many ads" fascinates me deeply. Has a business ever publicly quantified how many ads you get? Does YouTube say, "we expose you to an average of x seconds of commercials and y pixels of static ads"? How do I know what half should be? We've all been there: "it feels like YouTube has cranked the ads way up lately..." Will "half" just become "full" when "full" gets doubled next year?
I'd love for it to literally be "half ads" - whereas Twitter Plebeian gets a full add, Twitter Bluesbros only see the top half of the ad. Could result in amusing ads where the top half is aimed at the richies and the bottom half has "stick it to the man" discounts that only poors would see.
Actually, user segmentation and giving discounts to poor people only on the same ad is absolutely brilliant, it’s elon-muskesque style of brilliance. It’s everything together: “Stick it to the man”, the rich can’t really complain, it’s correct i terms of user segmentation, and it’s a good joke too.