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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#211

Post by baby »

thorum wrote: post #24

Blue 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.

I mean so is the Github "pro" badge. You don't need it if all you're using are free features. And yet a lot of people buy it to showcase support or have that "cool" badge. If the same happens for twitter then good for them no? They get more funding to develop cool shit.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#212

Post by baby »

paxys wrote: post #182

It'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.

> for prioritizing your speech over others

how is that prioritizing your speech over others? There's a million ways to do it, and if you're a big boy you're probably throwing the big bucks. 8/mo is indeed not that much.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#213

Post by thaumasiotes »

Waterluvian wrote: post #16

"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?

> 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"?

Broadcast television and radio have always done this. How could they do anything else?

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#214

Post by baby »

Waterluvian wrote: post #16

"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?

It's easy really. You start a counter, whenever it's above zero you stop displaying ads until the counter goes back to 0.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#215

Post by uoaei »

memish wrote: post #202

A 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…

More mental gymnastics... I'm not even sure what point is being made by this move, other than devaluing the blue check to the point of meaninglessness. It's not even "utilitarian": if leveling the playing field was Musk's interest, he would have eliminated the blue check altogether.

There is no mechanism for anti-impersonation if all it takes to get a blue check is payment. Bot farms can also pay money for blue checks...

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#216

Post by baby »

thorum wrote: post #24

Blue 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.

That's the bet. I'm willing to bet that they'll make good money from it, which is all that matters from twitter's pov.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#218

Post by colinmhayes »

caldarons wrote: post #198

In a certain sense it feels like it's the right direction. But if you are essentially paying 8$/month how can you justify still displaying ads? I guess what I am trying to say is that for 8$ every month you should be getting more than just a status symbol (which possibily not that many people care about anyway) and be stuck with ads. Also, if Twitter is serious about creating a revenue stream for creators it should f…

It's not just a status symbol, it also boosts your posts. If I had to guess, the people likely to pay for this are power users in wealthy countries, aka the highest value users an ad platform has. Seems unlikely that they're monetized at less than $8 a month.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#219

Post by schleck8 »

memish wrote: post #140
criddell wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

King responds saying Twitter should be paying him. I think that makes a lot of sense.

It will be both. Pay to verify, get paid for creating content. "This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators" https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587505731611262976

What kind of content is being created on Twitter that warrants being paid? Reddit works flawlessly without that in longer form

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#220

Post by TeMPOraL »

jjfoooo6 wrote: post #158
Waterluvian wrote: post #16

"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?

In other words, it is that it's going to be very difficult for users to intuitively understand what "half ads" means and why they should pay for it. It's a completely nonsensical compromise. Musk's product ideas for Twitter seems to assume that what everyone wants is for Twitter to be more complex, with more knobs to fiddle with.

There's a simple way to make this legible to the user: instead of slashing ad frequency, eliminate half of ad surface. I.e. if there are N places on the page where ads are being served, turn off half of them for the paying users. This will be an obvious difference, and remain so even as the ad intensity/frequency increases.
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