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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#81

Post by vasco »

danpalmer wrote: post #68
DeRock wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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.

That's a good point, but while I don't have any data, I've heard anecdotally that for services that implement paid user tiers with no advertising, they always make much more from paid users than ads, on the order of 5-10x. While there is a distribution on how much ads users are worth, it's not enough to overcome that difference _at scale_. There are a small number of users who are worth $$$$, but they're a small amou…

You're making the same point that you're replying to. The juiciest users pay, so the non-paying users are the penny pinchers that convert way less on ads, so the ad revenue is obviously very low compared to the revenue from the paid users.

Similar to how people self selected into iOS and android and to this day its way more effective to advertise to less price sensitive iOS users than Android users with cheap phones, though the effect was even larger in the early days.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#82

Post by woodruffw »

I've had Twitter Blue lite for years: I use an adblocker, and I manually block every single advertisement that sneaks through by blocking the advertise's entire Twitter account. The end result is that my feed is nearly entirely organic, followed content.

Why would I pay $8/month for a materially worse experience?

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#83

Post by wsatb »

costcofries wrote: post #47
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…

"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…

I think you're missing the point. It's not about value, it's about means. $8/month could mean a lot or mean very little to your finances. That doesn't mean the person that can afford it is any more valuable to the conversation.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#84

Post by alligatorplum »

Waterluvian wrote: post #16

"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 Android Twitter app, I get an ad every 4 tweets on my timeline. So "half as many ads" would make it an ad every 8 tweets.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#85

Post by ssully »

memish wrote: post #71
mikkergp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such... odd behavior. For sure Stephen King who has a net worth of $500 million dollars does not mean "the price is too high". If Elon is successful, even I will read the business school case study on it, because it flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems and... well just about everything. The only way this works is if Elon's internal processes are way different from his public persona…

For King and many other blue checks it's a status symbol. A way for the Lord to distinguish himself from the peasants. King (aptly named) would be happier if it was a Veblen good that cost $100,000/mo, which he could afford, but the peasants can't. Elon is mocking King and his status symbol by saying "fine, how about $8?", which from the King's perspective, is worse than $20 because even more peasants will have it. T…

I don’t think you could have misread this interaction more than you already have.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#86

Post by fckgw »

thebeastie wrote: post #59

Bypass paywalls would be kind of a big deal imo. It could eventually shape how we use the internet and move away from ad based revenue.

It's been a feature for a long time. For some reason it was removed today and now Elon has "reintroduced" it as a new feature?

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/1/23434502/twitter-blue-ad-...

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#87

Post by Barrin92 »

bentt wrote: post #29

This is interesting. I have increasingly looked at Twitter as a business tool. This will push me further in that direction. It will make less sense to just hop on and drop hot takes without any purpose. I think I like it. That said, this doesn't really say "Global Town Hall".

yup. If you're going down the route of twitter as a civilizational platform starting to sell premium citizenship rather than the original "verify every real human being" certainly seems odd.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#88

Post by mateo411 »

tshaddox wrote: post #25
Waterluvian wrote: post #16

"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?

It's pretty well-known for traditional television broadcasts, right? Shows are edited and even scripted specifically to provide the right amount of slots for ads.

It's much harder to measure television ad impressions than digital ad impressions.

Publishers charge for digital ad impressions by the 1000. It's easy to measure because usually they receive an HTTP GET request indicating the ad has been served.

For TV that uses traditional broadcasts you have to sample and scale. This is what Nielsen and other ACR companies do.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#89

Post by matai_kolila »

keneda7 wrote: post #53
thorum wrote: post #24

Blue checkmarks are not just about verification and extra features. They’re a status symbol. They mean you are cool and notable enough to deserve one according the shadowy and mysterious Twitter checkmark committee. If they become a commodity that anyone with a little money can buy, they lose a big part of their appeal to the average person.

You hit the nail on the head in your post. The mysterious Twitter checkmark committee that got to gatekeep who could be in their group. Then people (probably the committee itself) started pushing the idea that blue check marks are more reliable and trustworthy. I am not okay with a random group of people being able to decide whether or not someone is trustworthy. I prefer the checkmark to mean this person pays x doll…

Trustworthiness has never been part of the equation, what the heck are you talking about???

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#90

Post by rmsaksida »

thorum wrote: post #24

Blue checkmarks are not just about verification and extra features. They’re a status symbol. They mean you are cool and notable enough to deserve one according the shadowy and mysterious Twitter checkmark committee. If they become a commodity that anyone with a little money can buy, they lose a big part of their appeal to the average person.

It depends. There are so many terrible posters with blue checkmarks that I almost consider it a red flag. Most of my favorite twitter profiles are unverified.
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