Twitter Blue for $8/Month • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#591

Post by jdlshore » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #582

jdlshore wrote: post #569

I'm likely to pay for it at that price. For reference, I have a bit more than 14K followers on Twitter. Why? Two reasons. 1) Funding social media through advertising has led to dysfunctional outcomes like outrage being more visible than high-quality content. I’m in favor of alternative revenue streams, although they have to provide value, and removing ads doesn't count as providing value. 2) My Twitter account is par…

What does a blue check get you anyway that you can't just have with a blue check emoji?

From the linked thread:

1) Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam

2) Ability to post long video & audio

3) Half as many ads

I also expect the following:

4) Increase in perceived legitimacy

#1 and #4 are valuable to me. #2 I don't care about at all, because my long-form content goes on my blog and YouTube. #3 is 'meh'--it'll be nice to have fewer ads, but my brain glazes right past them anyway.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#592

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:48 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #582

jdlshore wrote: post #569

I'm likely to pay for it at that price. For reference, I have a bit more than 14K followers on Twitter. Why? Two reasons. 1) Funding social media through advertising has led to dysfunctional outcomes like outrage being more visible than high-quality content. I’m in favor of alternative revenue streams, although they have to provide value, and removing ads doesn't count as providing value. 2) My Twitter account is par…

What does a blue check get you anyway that you can't just have with a blue check emoji?

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#593

Post by jjfoooo5 » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:49 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #549

tptacek wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not really discussing reality if you believe that Stephen King gets status from the blue check rather than it working the other way around. There are people that do (sadly, pathetically) extract status from blue checkmarks, but they're only able to do that because people like Stephen King play ball with this system. The "blue checkmark status" could literally be phrased as "people as high-status as Stephen King…

Without people like Stephen King sharing their halo, the blue checkmark will soon be the mark of tryhards

To some degree it already is, for people who have the checkmark you haven't heard of outside of Twitter.

It's a well worn meme to mock people throwing a fit over not getting a checkmark.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#594

Post by rtpg » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #387

UncleMeat wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite think it is luck - but a weird second thing. Musk has a reality distortion field. I think he is a bloviating jerk but I know a lot of really really smart and dedicated engineers in software and in more traditional fields like mech-e and aerospace who would rather work for Musk than any other person and are willing to take pay cuts to work for him. This means he really can surround himself with very skil…

So why is he able to get smart people around him? Its not like he pays them a lot or offer a good work/life balance in their job.

Mission, and there are a lot of smart people in the world. Also, some people identify with him because he acts completely the same as That One Guy in the university who had studied programming before getting to the CS classes.

I think that a lot of people also don't have to directly work with him, and there are a lot of assholes running companies. That being said, Musk's behavior personally turned me off from all of his companies' products, despite maybe 5 years ago thinking "if I ever buy a car, it'll be a Tesla"

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#595

Post by minhazm » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #434

koonsolo wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. There is a very big difference between Twitter and YouTube, and it's obvious once you know it. Look at the most popular people on twitter: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_Twitte... All celebrities outside of twitter. Then look at YouTube: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouT... Almost all made famous by YouTube.…

> Then look at YouTube: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouT ... > Almost all made famous by YouTube. I looked the top 50 in that list and maybe ~5 of them are what you describe. The rest are big music labels, TV channels, artists and other such independently popular figures, not very different from Twitter.

Unclear why this is getting downvoted, it is accurate statement. Only 20 of the top 50 channels are not brands. Of those 20 if you exclude music channels like BTS, Blackpink, Justin Bieber, etc. you're only left with 10 channels.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#596

Post by tptacek » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

memish wrote: post #572

tptacek wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not really discussing reality if you believe that Stephen King gets status from the blue check rather than it working the other way around. There are people that do (sadly, pathetically) extract status from blue checkmarks, but they're only able to do that because people like Stephen King play ball with this system. The "blue checkmark status" could literally be phrased as "people as high-status as Stephen King…

The elite have always used myriad silly ways to distance themselves from the unwashed masses throughout history.

The silly way Stephen King distances himself from the unwashed masses is the 400 million copies of his books that he's sold to them, and the various movies and TV properties built on his IP. Again: you're not talking about reality if you think people like King care about blue-check status more than Twitter cares about keeping them happy. You can wishcast that away any way you please, but that's all you're doing. Twitter needs Taylor Swift on the platform talking about Midnights. Twitter could kick Swift off the platform and do nothing at all to her popularity.

What's pretty clearly happening in these conversations is that Twitter-believers are conflating blue-check remora users who have no public profile outside of Twitter with actual celebrities. King is right, and Musk knows it: if he's smart, Musk will in fact find ways to kick things back to King, Swift, and LeBron to keep them happy. He needs them, and they don't need him at all.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#597

Post by tptacek » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:52 PM UTC

jjfoooo5 wrote: post #593

sangnoir wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without people like Stephen King sharing their halo, the blue checkmark will soon be the mark of tryhards

To some degree it already is, for people who have the checkmark you haven't heard of outside of Twitter. It's a well worn meme to mock people throwing a fit over not getting a checkmark.

When some dipshit pundit throws that hissy fit, the meme is dead on.

When Twitter annoys people like Stephen King, it's exactly backwards.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#598

Post by bandyaboot » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

bufferoverflow wrote: post #480

arkades wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephen King’s tweet on that topic, to summarize: “ $20 a month to keep my blue check? Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” https://twitter.com/stephenking/status/1587042605627490304?s...

He is bluffing.

Are you saying he won’t leave or that he will accept paying money to Elon Musk for his checkmark?

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#599

Post by jjfoooo5 » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #528

mjfl wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and now we have more of a paper trail to stop them

You really don't though. It's trivially easy to create new valid unique payment information with a free virtual credit card number and a fake name/address. This is a very hard problem to truly solve.

There's a reason there are entire companies that focus on the problem of ID verification, it's difficult problem.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#600

Post by CamelCaseName » Tue, Nov 01, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

BbzzbB wrote: post #561

peter422 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why YouTube is a platform with value and Twitter isn't.

That's silly. While you can't directly monetize your Twitter account, it can expand or straight up create your reach which you can use as a funnel to whatever monetizable content you have. That probably makes it less valuable for Twitter Inc., but it sure is valuable for Twitter users. As a recent example, think of Pieter Levels (@levelsio). You think he would've gotten $10k first day sales on his avatar AI project w…

You can absolutely monetize your Twitter account directly.