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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#41

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…

I was really hoping for no ads! Huge bummer on that front.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#42

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…

> Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation

I'd assume the $8 high-rollers can still retweet and amplify the poors.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#43
post #26

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…

Netflix has ad-tier coming for $7/month. HBO Max costs like $16/month. I get ads for Hulu, but that costs only $.99/month on Black Friday deal. I'm paying $80/year for Disney, and I think Apple is still charging only $5/month. So....I don't know, $8 doesn't feel that ridiculously out of line priced. [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/netflix-ad-supported-tier-price...

Those companies all spend money to create and/or license content. Twitter seems to want users to pay $8/mo and continue to see ads for the privilege of creating the content that brings users to Twitter?

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#44
post #28

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…

Why does any price make no sense? "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Though to truly resolve this, they need 0 ads, not 50% fewer.

I think it's bimodal. Either Twitter is worth like 100$+ per month if you're a journalist/brand, or it's less than 0, and in Stephen King's case he's correct that Twitter should probably be paying him.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#45
post #28

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…

Why does any price make no sense? "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Though to truly resolve this, they need 0 ads, not 50% fewer.

Plus it doesn't mean they won't also sell your data to third parties - there's more to your digital presence than just selling you ads.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#47

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…

"biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation"

I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out of being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive enough value to pay $8. The difference however is that now your contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even engage more now.

If you aren't that user, then maybe you don't derive enough value from conversation because you are mostly a consumption user. So you continue as you do today, consuming and occasionally replying to tweets but hardly ever having your response seen or acknowledged.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#48

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…

> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all.

Adverse selection. The people willing to pay to remove ads are probably your most profitable users to show ads to.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#49

"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?

On the instagram feed every fifth post is a sponsored post

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#50
post #7

Why do people think that twitter is worth paying for?

Take a look at Linkedin, they make tonnes of revenue from premium features. The problem is that Twitter suddenly deciding that it's going to create a brand new revenue stream by charging for features that don't exist is about as sane a strategy as me deciding I'm going to start developing gills before my next swimming lesson.

The thing with LinkedIn is that I could see paying for it, because you could make a connection with actual monetary value (The ability to get a job at a higher salary).
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