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Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

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Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#31

Post by londons_explore »

manningthegoose wrote: post #3

As someone who was an initial skeptic when this was first announced, I really appreciate what twitter is trying to do with Blue, especially around direct payments to publishers. Any step to get the internet off of the ad-based data-harvesting revenue model is ultimately better for almost all parties.

Unfortunately, I suspect $2.99 per month isn't sufficient to make these publishers whole with what they would have earned from the same users.

Only a small fraction of twitter users will sign up, and the overlap with the kind of users likely to spend money on advertisers products will be big.

I suspect this is true at nearly any price point. Even if it cost $50 per month, the tiny fraction of users who did sign up would be worth more than $50 in monthly ad revenue, since those are the kind of people who will subscribe to other high value services.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#33

Post by dylan604 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #22
manningthegoose wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it probably won't, at least not while it's still printing money for all the corporate entities involved. But it's my understanding that most of the data-harvesting tools in use today were originally created to enhance ad-targeting and drive up CPM. At the very least we can hope products like Blue might put a dent in this incentive structure.

Cable television was supposed to be a direct funded, ad free alternative to broadcast.

Something about a road being paved with good intentions feels appropriate here.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#35

Post by koolba »

> In continuing our commitment to strengthen and support publishers and a free press, a portion of the revenue from Twitter Blue subscription fees goes directly to publishers within our network.

I’m going to guess that I won’t find any NY Post stories about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop on this filtered platform.

Honestly this just sounds like a door fee for an echo chamber.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#37

Post by terr-dav »

manningthegoose wrote: post #29
tootie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, it's not direct payment to publishers. It's indirect via twitter. You can pay publishers directly already by buying subscriptions. Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels from twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional journalism. This is mostly my hot take just based on the press release, but color me dubious. Local news is struggling nationwide and this doesn't feel like a solution. It feels like s…

> Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels from twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional journalism. Isn't that what they're already doing? Except the payer is the advertiser instead of the platform itself via the subscriber.

Professional journalism has always had this problem to a degree; there's always been an advertiser or other funding source you don't want to piss off. Twitter just exacerbates this by rewarding the most sensational, attention-grabbing posts.

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#39

Post by perihelions »

bri3d wrote: post #20
perihelions wrote: post #10

This seems eerily similar to what people feared could happen to the web in the absence of net neutrality, only with the role of the ISP this time replaced by a platform content referrer. A multi-tiered web: premium lanes for corporate sponsors with money changing hands. > "On iOS and desktop, Twitter Blue members will enjoy a fast-loading, ad-free reading experience when they visit many of their favorite news sites a…

I don't think the fear with network neutrality was ever the idea of a content aggregator buying content on behalf of a subscriber, was it? My understanding of the argument with network neutrality was that the combination of the network provider as a natural monopoly and the network provider's ability to render content inaccessible would result in a fragmented Internet - you can only run so many wires to a house, and…

It's qualitatively different, but there's some similarities in appearances. The end-user viewpoint, if this trend grows, is that the majority of the internet could present as a set of subscription packages -- the more you buy, the more of the internet you can access, and at higher service levels. Because of these new financial incentives, previously open, ad-supported websites will shift to becoming closed, subscription services: as the friction for end-users to subscribe to things goes down (because of federation*), this becomes more common. The open web goes dark. Conversely, since this is also an income source for the platforms/referrers, they'll want to boost referrals to partnering companies higher than non-partners -- tiered service. It's true this isn't the hard severity of an ISP throttling, or cutting off, non-partnering websites; but it's a soft analogue of it.

*(This friction can be zero. You needn't take any positive action to subscribe to the Nth website; rather the platforms you subscribe to abstract that away for you, as they monitor all your clicks and visits, and handle the income-splitting transparently behind the curtains. Basically the Spotify model, for the open WWW).

Re: Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

#40

Post by angulardragon03 »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #27
angulardragon03 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally you'd also get ad-free access to Twitter itself, which I would certainly consider paying for. Considering the annual per-user revenue is ~ 12USD [1], this seems like something that would be financially interesting to Twitter. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/forecast-of-the-day%3A-twitt...

Is this not covering promoted tweets? That's what I'd like to pay to not see.

Nope, it just provides access to articles without ads. Certainly has its uses if you use Twitter as a news aggregator, but it’s not that useful for me.
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