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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#841

Post by dragonwriter »

threatofrain wrote: post #433
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.…

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.

> There’s not enough “room” to produce interesting content solely on Twitter

While I think that Musk’s plan is going to backfire, it is worth noting that he tries to address this in a narrow respect, in that paid users under the new plan would be able to distribute longer video/audio content with tweets.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#842

Post by ulfw »

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…

Nobody finds you more legit as a consultant because you have a blue check box on Elon's twitter app. Come on now.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#843

Post by DeathArrow »

I don't care much about Twitter, I didn't like the way the platform was policed, I didn't like the sheer amount of bots and for sure I didn't like the limit on text messages.

But it seems reasonable for an app having payd and free tiers, with the free tiers being add supported.

Somehow the app has to pay bills and staff.

If I'll find Twitter of any use at some point in time, I will pay $8 if that will yield some benefits over free tier.

Some people can't afford to pay or don't want to, which is why there is also a free tier. It isn't like Musk forces everyone to pay, but if you derive some value from Twitter it is normal to pay.

I guess some people hate Musk and they are going to great lengths to justify their hate coming with puerile reasons about why Twitter suddenly became 'bad' and predicting it a quick death.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#844

Post by dragonwriter »

koonsolo wrote: post #421
resoluteteeth wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "content" here is just tweets. It may not be "content" in the way you are imagining, but it's still true that almost all twitter users are using the site to view tweets from a small number of people (call them content creators or influencers if you like) with large numbers of followers.

Sure, but that small number of people are already famous outside of twitter. YouTube and TikTok creates new celebrities, twitter doesn't.

> Sure, but that small number of people are already famous outside of twitter.

That’s not entirely true, but for many of the ones that aren’t, blue checks and verification are often very much not in their interests.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#845

Post by dragonwriter »

s_ting765 wrote: post #341
paxys wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the core problem with this approach. Elon and others have the idea in their head that Twitter is a social graph where people come to interact with each other, and everyone is relatively equal. So every user paying $X/mo to solidify their place in the graph makes some conceptual sense. In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. A tiny percentage of users are creators while the vast majority are c…

> So you want to instead do the exact opposite – ask the consumers to pay and fund your creators with that money. I think it's only Onlyfans that can get away with such a business model.

> > So you want to instead do the exact opposite – ask the consumers to pay and fund your creators with that money.

> I think it’s only Onlyfans that can get away with such a business model.

OnlyFans is not (by far) the only site that has a business model of “consumers purchase from producers and the site rakes in a share from that”, nor even the only one (again, by far) with that model where what is purchased is digital content.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#846

Post by mateuszf »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #817
bandyaboot wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He won't leave. Not sure if he cares about the blue checkmark enough to pay, but he is rich enough not to care. His net worth is half a billion.

I don't think anybody believes he cares about the money. Seems like it's a matter of principles for him.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#848

Post by Karrot_Kream »

freejazz wrote: post #462
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think you're over-estimating their value, if they were posting their thoughts elsewhere without the blue check next to their name no one would be engaging with it, it's honestly such bad content.

Oh, you mean like the articles in the newspapers that they regularly publish? What exactly do you think a journalist does, just post on Twitter?

There's journalism and there's "journalism". There's certainly standup publications with great authors who make names for themselves by writing great articles. I've been really enjoying Heather Knight's coverage of public waste/corruption in SF for example. On the other hand, there's a lot of really crappy journalists who churn out top 10 lists on shady publications to get paid and desperately need that blue check to add whatever legitimacy they can grasp for to their names. The former category will have no trouble without Twitter, the latter will struggle. That's the steelman anyway. Most crappy journalists would flame out with or without a blue checkmark though.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#849

Post by themitigating »

tedunangst wrote: post #703
tptacek wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He needs something, because he's tied tens of billions of dollars of his own money in an LBO that left him in control of a company with about a billion dollars a year of debt service cost.

That's a mere 10 million blue checkmarks he needs to sell.

According to The Guardian, there are about 400,000 verified users on Twitter, as of 2021. That equates to less than 1% of Twitter accounts.

Assuming a 100% conversion rate and that number is accurate, 3.2 million a month or $38 a million a year.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/31/elon-musk...

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#850

Post by themitigating »

TuringNYC wrote: post #680
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…

>> Anywhere Stephen King writes, he'll have an audience. Is that really true? Suppose King goes to a new social platform. Sure, I might install that app, but without a critical mass or others on that platform, what are the chances I actually check that app frequently?

If he says something note worthy on another service won't news services and maybe even other twitter users report on it?
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