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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#751
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut instinct is that the right price for verification is something like $1000 as a one-time fee. Lots of people who are active Twitter users will find that fee useful at some point in their life (as a business marketing expense), and Twitter will likely extract a lot more from them by charging $1000 once rather than $8/month.

Influencers and hustlebros will pay that, celebrities won't. If the celebrities leave, Twitter dies.

I can imagine the exchange between Stephen King and his agent:

> "Stephen, I'm trying to market your books, but the publishers aren't seeing any engagement on Twitter".

> "Oh I left because I don't want to pay $20 / month to someone I disagree with politically."

> "Have you been hitting the bottle again?"

End of conversation. The value most of these celebrities get vastly exceeds $20 / month. The Twitter-celebrity relationship is symbiotic, nor parasitic.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#752
post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is really true. People on HN will see less of Stephen King, to the extent that they're not part of his audience (maybe HN is more of an Ari Aster crowd). But that doesn't matter: people aren't spending hundreds of millions of dollars on 2019 movies based on books he wrote in the 1980s because he's driving lots of Twitter engagement. This whole discussion about King's relevance is super weird. I think it's j…

I agree with you to an extent, but I will note that while most Americans don't directly use Twitter, I think a much much larger fraction are exposed to it . It's hard to escape when every news outlet and gossip farm cites it constantly and you have to factor that in when discussing its relevance. I simultaneously don't think I personally know a single person that uses Twitter regularly and yet I equally don't think I…

I left Twitter a few years ago, and other than stories about Twitter itself I can’t think of the last time I saw Twitter content.

I’m a middle aged tech dude and I see more tik tok content! And I don’t have any tik tok presence.

I think it’s really easy to over-estimate twitters impact. I virtually never see anything from it.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#753
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that someone who is addicted to Twitter and worth $500M would leave because they lose their special Blue Check over $20 is hilarious. He's just butt hurt because the VIP room and symbol is being opened to the proles. Now any schlub with $8 can have the once exclusive symbol.

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…

Trump had 88.9mm followers on twitter. He has 3.9mm followers on Truth.

Trump will have people listen to him no matter where he’s writing, but one of these platforms is certainly a downgrade in terms of audience than the other.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does adding a new subscription feature and changing verification checkmarks to "secondary tags" level the playing field? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587527711228149765

Because previously you had to be blessed to get a bluecheck, now you just have to pay. Way more people have the means to pay than were blessed.

If you look at any politician account they now have a small flag and "official" below their name. 2 tiers have become 3.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s saying the price is bullshit, not that he can’t afford it. To him, it offers basically no value. While him being on Twitter does offer Twitter value. He’s probably right, although it doesn’t generalize to most celebrities who do have a vested interest in paying to promote themselves.

Twitter offers him value, or he wouldn't be on it. Personally, I think they could charge $50/mo and most blue checks would pay it. I think Elon has the right idea, you gotta dip their toes in the water, then jack up the price later.

> Twitter offers him value, or he wouldn't be on it

I mean yes, but that value might be so low as to not be worth paying for. Not even for the monetary cost, but for the effort involved in setting up the payment (entering card details, etc) and then checking your bill is what you expect for the rest of time. That tiny amount of extra effort might make twitter not worth it alone for some people, even without the financial cost.

And even that yes it does offer value I'd qualify in that the value might ultimately on reflection be considered to be ultimately a loss on net. For example a heroin addict gets value out of heroin, but on balance the value they get (a fleeting pleasure) often isn't worth the damage done to their lives, but you could say "well it obviously offers value or they wouldn't be taking it". Note that I'm not claiming twitter is addictive or damaging like heroin, just trying to point out that "must have value because they do it" isn't really a solid argument a lot of the time

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#756
post #97

I wanted to check how much it costs in Czechia adjusted for purchasing power and quickly learned you cannot actually buy it from here. Oh well. > We’ve launched Twitter Blue in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In these regions, Twitter Blue is available for in-app purchase on Twitter for iOS and Android, or on twitter.com through our payment partner Stripe.

Obviously the copy on all marketing pages about Blue is not updated yet, but I bet it soon will be as Musk was said to give a very short deadline to implement changes for engineers

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#757
post #699
post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's quite active. https://stephenking.com/works/all/ then sort newest to oldest.

Except of the social networks I browse, stephenking.com is not one of them. So really no I wouldn't hear of him. I'm sure his die hard fans will though.

Is Elon going to also ban links to stephenking.com if he doesn't pay $8?

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#758

The dynamics on Twitter are quite weird. There’s a small number of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is an important part of their work or life. If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software ($100 pa seems pretty cheap there). Indeed maybe media publications should be paying for…

The underlying message here appears to be that one size does not fit all.

But for personal data collectors and advertisers, the largest size is the only one that fits. Quantity not quality. Audience. Reach.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#759

The dynamics on Twitter are quite weird. There’s a small number of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is an important part of their work or life. If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software ($100 pa seems pretty cheap there). Indeed maybe media publications should be paying for…

> There’s a small number of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is an important part of their work or life.

Twitter also needs them so it’s a symbiotic relationship. In some cases I’d say Twitter needs them more than they need it. Like popular music celebrities, sport stars etc. So Twitter has to tread carefully not to antagonize such crowd pullers lest they migrate to a competitor social media.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#760
post #699
post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's quite active. https://stephenking.com/works/all/ then sort newest to oldest.

Except of the social networks I browse, stephenking.com is not one of them. So really no I wouldn't hear of him. I'm sure his die hard fans will though.

I was assuming you might have Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, or go to the bookstore or library or movies.
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