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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#91

Post by dboreham »

xemdetia wrote: post #30
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'd also say that $8 a month is a great price to astroturf for a month. Also why is the idea of Twitter monthly even sensible? Who plans their Twitter identity as a power user month to month? Why is it not just $100 a year?

It probably is.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#92

Post by hackinthebochs »

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.

>they lose a big part of their appeal to the average person.

However, there is a lag time between when the status-conferring benefits end and the semantics of the blue check mark in the minds of users catches up. They can potentially make a lot of money in that lag time and bootstrap a new valuable semantics around the verified label.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#93

Post by ssully »

linuxftw wrote: post #57
oneoff786 wrote: post #27

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.

Of course it offers him value, but Stephen King being on the platform is more valuable to Twitter than it is for King.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#94

Post by bambax »

Matt Levine:

> Musk wants to start charging people to have a little blue check mark next to their names on Twitter. I wrote yesterday about reports that the price will be $19.99 per month, but that seems not to be a final decision, and other numbers have been suggested. Also last night Musk was personally negotiating the price with Stephen King. “$20 a month to keep my blue check?” tweeted King. “[No], they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” Musk replied: “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?” I absolutely love that, in between his busy schedule of reading printouts of 50 pages of code per Twitter employee to decide who to fire, Musk is personally going to negotiate commercial terms with each of Twitter’s hundreds of thousands of verified users. I have a blue check, I’m gonna tweet “I’ll pay $7.69” and see what he says.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#95

Post by pclmulqdq »

minimaxir wrote: post #5

The price 100% was $20/mo as previously reported by journalists until Twitter dunked on it, and Elon's interpretation of the backlash is "the price is too high" and not "any price makes no sense at all." This pricing clarification is most likely due to Stephen King's complaint: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144 > We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How…

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.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#96

Post by Waterluvian »

dieortin wrote: post #70
Waterluvian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I admire about Elon (which is saying a lot...) is that for whatever reason, he's ready to bet the farm over and over. Whether he's some genius tactician or an impulsive moron, he just bought Twitter and is poised to drastically alter it. "flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems" indeed! Forgive me for this analogy but it's in the news: Imagine if NATO just said one day, "y…

I really don’t want to live in a world in which so much depends on impulsive individuals. Your example sounds like a nightmare. That’s no way to make decisions.

Yeah. It does sound like a nightmare. And I'm glad that, for now at least, those who get to make the decisions are not as impulsive as countless people are online about the matter.

And when it comes to a $44 billon purchase, it sounds like a nightmare to affect it so impulsively.

At least, unlike the nuclear fallout, it's not my money, I guess.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#97

Post by frankjr »

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.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#98

Post by MallocVoidstar »

cinntaile wrote: post #39
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".

I don't get the link. Why would Binance be in favour of impersonating others for $8/month?

Crypto people are generally not in favor of providing your government ID for things. "Pay $8 in crypto and also give us your identification documents" will not be popular.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#100

Post by tcmart14 »

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 its that. I think it is literal to the effect of, twitter wouldn't have such a huge crowd to serve ads to without people like King who have tons of followers coming to the platform to get updates. An example, I don't have a twitter account, but I will surf Hector Martin's twitter for updates on Asahi Linux development. If it wasn't for Hector Martin's content, twitter would never be requested by my browser.

So it is essentially, charge the people who bring the users to twitter.

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