Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter Blue for $8/Month

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#361

Post by madeofpalk »

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…

I think this would do the complete opposite. Create two tiers of of users: Lords with the money to spend $8/month on getting a blue tick next to their name, and the peasants who don't cough up.

I can't wait to be disregarded just as a spam bot because I thought it's an embarrassing waste of money.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#362

Post by yamtaddle »

lupire wrote: post #337
yamtaddle wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some blue checks need Twitter (mid-level youtubers, for instance). Some don't (Stephen King, for instance). In either case, Twitter needs the blue checks because they are, to a large degree, the reason non-blue-checks visit and engage with Twitter. I can see someone like Stephen King being annoyed at having to pay anything when his presence is probably helping Twitter quite a bit to begin with.

Stephen King needs a blue check because Twitter is terrible at deleting imposter accounts.

Why does he care? Seems like that's worse for Twitter than it is for him.

[EDIT] My point is, from King's perspective, this likely looks like "you're here and making $X over what you would if you just relied on your fans to repost all your stuff on here for you, we're making $Y more than we otherwise would because you're here, plus we've given you this blue-check thing to solve a problem we have, but now $Y isn't enough and we're going to make you pay money to keep participating in this program that exists to solve a problem for us."

You can see how, unless $X is pretty big, someone who's already rich might say, "well fine, fuck you too" over such a thing.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#363

Post by resoluteteeth »

xtracto wrote: post #335
paxys wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the core problem with this approach. Elon and others have the idea in their head that Twitter is a social graph where people come to interact with each other, and everyone is relatively equal. So every user paying $X/mo to solidify their place in the graph makes some conceptual sense. In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. A tiny percentage of users are creators while the vast majority are c…

I always felt Twitter as "old man yells at cloud" kind of communication. I've never seen proper "content" created (like pinterest, tik tok, etc). Most of the "content" I see are the asinine multi-post threads and text-pictures notices from angry people/companies.

The "content" here is just tweets. It may not be "content" in the way you are imagining, but it's still true that almost all twitter users are using the site to view tweets from a small number of people (call them content creators or influencers if you like) with large numbers of followers.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#364

Post by brookst »

bombcar wrote: post #119
ssully wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it offers him value, but Stephen King being on the platform is more valuable to Twitter than it is for King.

I wonder if that's actually true - if it is, King should go make his own Twitter-like thing.

I don't think it works that way?

When Oprah is seen dining at a restaurant, the restaurant gets more value from the PR than Oprah gets from the meal. That does not lead to the conclusion that she should go open a restaurant.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#365

Post by Dylan16807 »

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."

It levels a few people and covers the rest of the field with potholes.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#366

Post by ausbah »

eric_b wrote: post #355

I guess I'll go on record and say I think this is a great idea. There's too many journalists who just spew hot takes all day - at least make them pay for the privilege

one of the main touted draws of twitter is it's suppose to be the "public square of the internet". you not liking what someone posts shouldn't really curtail that (minus them being a private company and what not)

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#367

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

UncleMeat wrote: post #157
minimaxir wrote: post #5

The price 100% was $20/mo as previously reported by journalists until Twitter dunked on it, and Elon's interpretation of the backlash is "the price is too high" and not "any price makes no sense at all." This pricing clarification is most likely due to Stephen King's complaint: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144 > We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How…

Imagine making pricing decisions for a 40 billion dollar business on a fucking whim based on feedback from a famous author. I guess this is in character, given that Musk likes to price things with meme numbers already.

I don't think he did do that. Stephen King made it clear he wouldn't pay any price on principle.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#368

Post by TigeriusKirk »

yamtaddle wrote: post #299
mikkergp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such... odd behavior. For sure Stephen King who has a net worth of $500 million dollars does not mean "the price is too high". If Elon is successful, even I will read the business school case study on it, because it flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems and... well just about everything. The only way this works is if Elon's internal processes are way different from his public persona…

Some blue checks need Twitter (mid-level youtubers, for instance). Some don't (Stephen King, for instance). In either case, Twitter needs the blue checks because they are, to a large degree, the reason non-blue-checks visit and engage with Twitter. I can see someone like Stephen King being annoyed at having to pay anything when his presence is probably helping Twitter quite a bit to begin with.

> Twitter needs the blue checks because they are, to a large degree, the reason non-blue-checks visit and engage with Twitter.

That may have been true at one time, but I'm not so sure it is any more.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#369

Post by watwut »

ljw1001 wrote: post #148

I think this worked well. Instead of conversation about how Elon would use twitter to undermine democracy, civil discourse, whatever, everyone is talking about what’s a fair price to pay him to undermine democracy, civil discourse, whatever.

I mean, yeah. But also, democracy and civil discourse are more endangered outside of twitter then inside of it. If twitter becomes bad enough, it will be next 4chan or whatever.

However, politicians lying and gloating after basically yet another domestic terrorist attacks, politicians trying to make it harder for opposition to vote will stay.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#370

Post by chihuahua »

trh0awayman wrote: post #146

I would pay $10 a month for Twitter Black - it would block everyone with Twitter Blue and you get to interact with the dregs, the most controversial figures of all of Twitter, based on most reports/blocks/flags, etc. (minus the bots, crypto stuff). That's the real town square. Let me sleep in the gutter!

You're in luck - that's what Parler is, and it's free!
Post reply on HN