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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#261

Post by rodgerd »

joenathanone wrote: post #11
BryanBeshore wrote: post #2

You will also get: - Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam - Ability to post long video & audio - Half as many ads

>- Priority in replies, mentions & search He starts off with "Power to the people", but this is just "power to the people with money"(which is the status quo). If you don't have $8/mo disposable income to spend on a vanity feature, then what you have to say will be overshadowed by the people who do.

"You get as much speech as you want to pay for" is probably the single least surprising take from the VC elite.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#262

Post by mscarborough »

memish wrote: post #243
res0nat0r wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some better takes on this from what I've seen: https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1587381512500125699 > If one in five current blue ticks paid $20 a month that would raise just under $15 million a year for Twitter…Twitter’s current revenues (mostly from ads) are $5 billion a year. Musk’s apparent plan would generate about 30 hours’ worth of annual revenue. https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/158750920240192716…

"It elicits shrieks because it’s more about leveling the playing field than making money."

Reposting your comment doesn't make it any more true.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#263

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

ericd wrote: post #221
uoaei wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 check…

It substantially changes the economics of bots - cheap for a person, expensive for a person running 10,000 bots that want to appear legitimate.

Expensive for a person running 10,000 bots, irrelevant to a hostile nation doing the same.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#265

Post by paganel »

res0nat0r wrote: post #228
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…

Some better takes on this from what I've seen: https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1587381512500125699 > If one in five current blue ticks paid $20 a month that would raise just under $15 million a year for Twitter…Twitter’s current revenues (mostly from ads) are $5 billion a year. Musk’s apparent plan would generate about 30 hours’ worth of annual revenue. https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/158750920240192716…

> Asking low-income Twitter users to

I'm curious how many low-income Twitter users now have a blue-check.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#266

Post by morsch »

danpalmer wrote: post #14

The good: Twitter should not be editorally curating people through verification, making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change, as long as it's not necessary for participation. Brands, celebrities, those in the public eye could benefit from this. Needs to be implemented with care and ideally with a branding change so as not to confuse users as the semantics change. The bad: $8 is…

Virtually all streaming services still have ads at the paid tier: sponsored content in YouTube videos, product placement everywhere, athletes that are living billboards.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#267

Post by comboy »

ericd wrote: post #221
uoaei wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 check…

It substantially changes the economics of bots - cheap for a person, expensive for a person running 10,000 bots that want to appear legitimate.

I think the expensive part comes mostly from the part that it is hard to make anonymous payment. Sending money is kind of a verification (unless dogecoin is accepted ;) ).

I still have no clue why bots would care to have it though, since there is obviously a very high percentage of people who don't.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#268

Post by bumby »

suoduandao2 wrote: post #232
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…

Funny, I was just listening to Naval Ravikant talking about it being better to seek wealth than status, because the latter is a zero-sum game. hard to unsee that dynamic once it's pointed out.

Don't humans generally value relative wealth, which would also make it a zero sum game?

E.g., someone in poverty today isn't particularly comforted by knowing they have luxuries that former kings didn't have, like plumbing, because well-being is tied to relative scales

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#269

Post by celestialcheese »

danpalmer wrote: post #14

The good: Twitter should not be editorally curating people through verification, making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change, as long as it's not necessary for participation. Brands, celebrities, those in the public eye could benefit from this. Needs to be implemented with care and ideally with a branding change so as not to confuse users as the semantics change. The bad: $8 is…

> See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming services have ads, but for most online content - video, journalism, etc, if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just nickle-and-diming users to give them a bunch of ads, particularly when the marginal cost for Twitter Blue is essentially zero).

Even after your edit, this isn't true. NYTimes includes ads in their paid subscription products. AFAIK, most premium news and editorial still includes ads. It's not nearly as many or as intrusive as the free pubs like NYPost, but there's still ads even though I'm paying $20/mo for NYTimes

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#270

Post by clouddrover »

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…

> A lot of people aren't groking what this means

There is no mystery here. It went like this:

1. Musk signed a binding agreement to buy Twitter.

2. And then he got cold feet when he decided he didn't like the deal he made and he spent six months desperately trying to not buy Twitter.

3. And then he finally understood that he would lose the court case and that he had to live up to the contract and so he bought Twitter at the originally agreed price.

4. And now Musk wants Twitter users to pay for his poor business decision and fund him out of his debt.

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