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

Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

blog.twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 116 posts

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

#71

Post by gwbas1c »

tootie wrote: post #25
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.

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…

> You can pay publishers directly already by buying subscriptions

But that's not how most of us access news. We look at sources like Twitter, Hacker News, Facebook, Google News for links to articles.

Subscribing to a single website doesn't work in this model.

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

#72

Post by wbobeirne »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #18
johnnyo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average across all users is $12, but I suspect the average over people willing to pay for Blue is likely higher than that. It's can be a Catch-22 in some cases. The same people most willing to pay to opt-out are the ones most coveted by advertisers.

Some how I don't think the people that want to pay to get rid of ads are the ones clicking on them. Anecdotally someone I am close to doesn't seem to mind ads and regularly buys products from them, I block ads and rarely ever buy products from them. I'd pay for not being served ads in the first place

It's not necessarily about clicking the ad, it's also about brand awareness and the subconscious effect of having seen it.

In the back of your head when you see the product the next time, you might think to yourself "I've seen this somewhere before... it's probably reputable." Or when you're in need of something, that brand's product might pop into your head sooner as something to assess.

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

#73

Post by dillondoyle »

Is the WaPo subscription full or is it more like Apple News where you only get access to a couple headline articles and have to pay even more beyond news+ for full access?

just looked it shows me $5.99 a month for wapo add on.

If so might be worth it for me even though I don't use twitter. The rest I think are mostly available on news+

Full bloomberg on apple news is $34.99 a month, though they do have more free articles than WaPo it seems and at least I can understand the value and niche of financial news not really worth reading about unless you're in finance.

I don't think NyTimes is even an option anymore. They make enough profit on their walled garden seems they won't ever participate in this stuff again.

The Apple News subscription I already pay for seems to be more for magazines. It used to have everything.

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

#74

Post by tshaddox »

tootie wrote: post #25
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.

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.

Wouldn't payment integration with Twitter (if executed well) just make it easier for Twitter users to convert to paying the publisher after seeing the publisher's tweet? I don't see how it would increase the incentive for a publisher to post clickbait tweets, except perhaps for publishers whose in-house payment flow is very poorly implemented or nonexistent.

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

#75

Post by williamscales »

tills13 wrote: post #11
echelon wrote: post #9

Can they let us pay to remove all sponsored tweets? That's all I want. I'd gladly pay $10/mo. YouTube Red is the best product experience, and it's something I would pay to have elsewhere. I hate ads. I never buy products from ads. They just distract me. I'd pay $1000/yr for a completely ad-free Google. (No search result ads, no AMP, no "McDonalds" in Google Maps, ...)

Never? Or never actively. i.e. do you unknowingly buy a product at a later date because you at one point saw an ad for it.

The unknowing aspect is why I would also be willing to pay quite a bit to have no ads.

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

#76

Post by darth_avocado »

tootie wrote: post #25
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.

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…

> You can pay publishers directly already by buying subscriptions.

I don't mind paying for news. However, I do mind being on hold for 2 hours on a 1800 number that I had to dig up from some defunct webpage to cancel my subscription.

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

#79

Post by contravariant »

otrahuevada wrote: post #55
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.

Facebook makes maybe about 30USD a year from any given profile: > https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a212721... Being relatively optimistic about Twitter's size, and assuming they're just fantastic at it, Twitter might make what, half of that? So for 3$ a month you need about half of the userbase to be on board for data munging to no longer make sense as a business model. I do wonder how high that m…

What's weird here is that I would estimate it to be very difficult to find a person who generated over 30USD of revenue through ads for anyone other than the people selling the ads.

But maybe my worldview is wrong here, I'm definitely not the right person to estimate Facebook's reach.

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

#80

Post by sodality2 »

contravariant wrote: post #79
otrahuevada wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook makes maybe about 30USD a year from any given profile: > https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a212721... Being relatively optimistic about Twitter's size, and assuming they're just fantastic at it, Twitter might make what, half of that? So for 3$ a month you need about half of the userbase to be on board for data munging to no longer make sense as a business model. I do wonder how high that m…

What's weird here is that I would estimate it to be very difficult to find a person who generated over 30USD of revenue through ads for anyone other than the people selling the ads. But maybe my worldview is wrong here, I'm definitely not the right person to estimate Facebook's reach.

Reminds me of: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."
Post reply on HN