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

601–610 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#601

Post by dmix »

mc32 wrote: post #584
dmix wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt $8 will be the only option. I’d bet $1000 that there will be a $16 (or whatever the ROI bar is) tier to be completely ad free. $8 entry fee seems reasonable from a pyscological perspective. It sounds like the modern version of $9.99, since 3 numbers is taboo on the Twitter style internet and 8 sounds better than 9

They _should_ have the corp version. Corp accounts (@corp_name) should be like $1000/year or something like that (probably could charge $10,000 and more). Nike, Coke, Dell, Disney, etc.

100% I agree.

Basically a tier for global brands that manage multiple regional accounts and need top level support. Which I'm sure already exists informally like all B2B SaaS sites that have listed monthly fees where big accounts are handled personally.

But more to your point I think there should be a paid bracket below that tier of global mega corps which is formalized and public. At least for transparency and marketing reasons.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#602

Post by beachy »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #451
threatofrain wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not enough "room" to produce interesting content solely on Twitter vs YouTube — you have to hiccup out your value in segmented tweet threads. Thus if Twitter does provide value to followers it is in referencing outside material. Elon is supposedly directing Twitter engineers to go full-steam on reviving Vine so we'll see if that can turn things around.

The vine crowd has long moved to Tiktok; even IG and YT couldn’t steal mindshare from them. Vine has no chance, given that they’re starting with a 6yr old product

I don't know much about Vine, but anecdotally I have ended up spending way too much time on YouTube reels, and have also now been drawn into the equivalent on Facebook, whatever that's called, and I barely use FB. So I don't think the super short form video market is a winner takes all one by any means.

On the contrary there's plenty of room for genuine innovation in this space. For example FB short form videos don't have a dislike button, so I have no way to guide the algorithm, and YouTube reels seems to zero in on some local maximum (in my case, game of thrones and golf videos). There's so much room for improvement in this space.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#603

Post by tptacek »

bee_rider wrote: post #579
tptacek wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anywhere Stephen King writes, he'll have an audience. That's what's so funny about this particular example. There are indeed Twitter celebrities who depend on Twitter for their audience, but King isn't one of them: he's pumping more credibility into Twitter than he's extracting from it, and the platform (and all the Twitter celebrity remora attached to it) depend on people like him to keep doing it. He's right: Twitt…

I think it is true of most. If your identity is worth verifying by Twitter, it is apparently worth something to Twitter. If you wanted to prove that your twitter account was you, you wouldn't need their permission, right? Surely you could sign a file on your Twitter account with your PGP key or whatever.

This has always been the bullshit story Twitter tells itself about the blue check. In reality, the value of the check has practically nothing to do with verifying identities, and everything to do with conferring status on people "notable" enough to qualify. The energy source for that status is, in fact, people like King, Swift, LeBron, Obama (and Trump), J. Lo and Jimmy Fallon; Twitter trades off the idea that the check puts its users in the same status tier as those celebrities.

How you know this is, there's a huge population of well-followed Twitter accounts without blue checks, and identity verification controversies virtually never occur. If you found a non-checked 50k-follower account tomorrow and tried to spoof them with a fake account, you'd get shouted down quickly enough that it wouldn't be worth the effort.

My point, again, is that the "verification" part of this is horseshit. It's not the value. It's not why anyone cares about the checks. The checks are endorsements of popularity and importance, and that's all they are.

Diluting that value (to zero, as seems to be the Twitter Blue plan) probably won't chase many celebs off the platform. Why would they care? Twitter isn't doing them any real favors; it's rather the opposite. But it'll lay bare the real dynamics of those stupid blue checkmarks. That might be a positive development for Twitter! But it's not going to make blue checks the next Bored Apes.

(Again: who knows? Maybe a critical mass of Twitter randos will pay for Twitter bling. Weirder things have happened; see apes, above.)

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#604

Post by [deleted] »

enumjorge wrote: post #409
bcrosby95 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Elon, what made you decide on $8?" "I was going to charge $20, but then Stephen King told me it was too much."

You joke, but after reading some texts from Musk and his social circle [1], I find it plausible that that is how some of these business decisions get made. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-...

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#605

Post by jjfoooo5 »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #548
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…

I wonder what would happen if they introduced some kind of scale (boosting a post? sponsored tweets?) $0 - you barely get heard $8 - you kind of get heard $88 - you really get heard $888 - everybody thinks the exact same thing as you do and you can manipulate portions of the population (lol)

There's no meaningful difference between what you are describing and advertising.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#606

Post by fundad »

enumjorge wrote: post #409
bcrosby95 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Elon, what made you decide on $8?" "I was going to charge $20, but then Stephen King told me it was too much."

You joke, but after reading some texts from Musk and his social circle [1], I find it plausible that that is how some of these business decisions get made. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-...

Of course they are going to raise the price to $20 before long

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#607

Post by andirk »

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…

My guess is that the $8/mo user pool is a target demo for advertisers who like people who like subscriptions. And there can be a premium charge for targeting the $8 burger

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#608

Post by biscottigelato »

matwood wrote: post #418
MallocVoidstar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will they actually be doing ID verification? Binance is one of the investors, so it might just be "if you can pay $8 you can be whoever you want, at least for a while".

Last I checked, Binance does KYC.

Crypto to crypto Binance has no KYC option up to $10k per day or so.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#609

Post by baby »

watwut wrote: post #359
baby wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean so is the Github "pro" badge. You don't need it if all you're using are free features. And yet a lot of people buy it to showcase support or have that "cool" badge. If the same happens for twitter then good for them no? They get more funding to develop cool shit.

Yeah, but the way this played out and was promoted, it wont say "cool". The badge being cool requires certain kind of PR and this does not seem to me to be it. In github case, pro badge means you support resource many many developers user for free and is super useful. In case of twitter, it is unclear what it means, really. That you want to yell louder I guess?

As a big twitter user that badge already has quite the status symbol

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#610

Post by Karrot_Kream »

soulofmischief wrote: post #502
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should ask ourselves if we should be placing Twitter's financial needs over the social and intellectual needs of humanity as a whole. 25% of US Adults produce 97% of tweets on Twitter. 75% of Twitter users don't post a single tweet per month. 42% of Twitter users that produce https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/11/15/1-the-views-... for all the stats

This is normal for a community. These statistics naturally fall in line with the Pareto Principle, and the concept of the vital few. [0] > Twitter has nothing to do with "humanity as a whole". It's obvious that the group that uses Twitter is niche yet highly engaged. You are confusing posting on Twitter with using it. The vast majority are lurkers who still consume information and then regurgitate that information in…

> This is normal for a community. These statistics naturally fall in line with the Pareto Principle, and the concept of the vital few.

The Pareto Principle is just a rule-of-thumb, it's not an actual law of anything, and is just an expression of power law dynamics. It's true that power law dynamics are common in most online communities, but 97% of content being created by 25% of users is staggering, a much stronger power law than most other forums. This is a highly engaged, medium-sized community (though I realize the nature of the platform (followers, algorithmic priority, etc) means that there are multiple overlapping sets of communities rather than a single community, and that these communities often vehemently grief each other.)

> You are confusing posting on Twitter with using it. The vast majority are lurkers who still consume information and then regurgitate that information in real life on other platforms. The statistics you provided don't paint an accurate picture of the "usefulness" of Twitter in modern public discourse.

Only 23% [1] of Americans use Twitter. Compare that to 81% of Americans using Youtube and 69% of Americans using Facebook. Only 13% of US Adults [2] get their news from Twitter, while 31% from Facebook and 22% from Youtube. Americans are the largest users of Twitter, followed by the Japanese. It's main significance in the public discourse derives from the 69% of American journalists [2] that use Twitter as part of their job, and this is not "public" discourse as much as journalist discourse.

> Do you have a better popular example of a modern day forum?

I know very few people in my real life that actually use Twitter. The ones that do are mostly in subcultures with a large presence on Twitter. My family doesn't use Twitter, most Twitter employees I know don't use Twitter. My partner only uses Twitter because she networks with other artists on it but doesn't actually use it for news or politics. Most of my friends don't use Twitter. Most people in my network know of Twitter only through quoted reports in news articles.

I think, and unless you have statistics to show otherwise, that the idea of a "modern day forum" role for Twitter lies only in the minds of highly engaged Twitter users. I mean I'm a highly engaged user of HN and I would be quite sad if it went away and actively fight to maintain its culture. I've watched a lot of online communities rot over time so I understand what it's like to watch your community change. But I don't pretend that HN or other online communities I'm part of are somehow a vital resource for all of humanity. The only noteworthy thing about Twitter's community is the number of journalists and celebrities talking to each other on it. That's all.

[1]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/05/10-facts-ab...

[2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/27/twitter-is-...

Post reply on HN