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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#971

Post by blibble »

berkes wrote: post #932
blibble wrote: post #902

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to be fair to musk he did say the $8 would be adjusted for local income

So if I put my location on twitter to Burundi, then request a blue checkmark, I'd get it for $0.80/month? Or would they have a team of people verifying that I'm from the country I say I am? Oh, wait. Point being: this whole thing was terribly poorly thought out, a lot of details left uncovered, in a niche where exactly those details are of crucial importance.

presumably as part of the validation they’ll check your country...

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#972

Post by type-r »

mvdwoord wrote: post #958
type-r wrote: post #332

interesting approach to have it be PPP adjusted. i wonder how they'll prevent people from high income countries faking they're in a lower income one.

I assume it would be possible via the identity check/payment processor? Identify with a document issued in country x...? You pay the price adjusted for that country, regardless of your IP geolocation.

Indeed that is an approach that would work but would people trust Twitter with that data just to give you a checkmark? Or even bother trying to find their ID / passport? Feels super high-friction and questionable from a privacy perspective for such a minor product.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#973

Post by jdlshore »

elicash wrote: post #970
jdlshore wrote: post #967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of value, I think it's going to be more about avoiding anti-value—specifically, I expect that accounts lacking the checkmark will be seen as spam, scams, or bit players. Here's what I expect to happen: 1) First, Twitter introduces paid verification. They cut back on their content moderation efforts on unverified accounts, but they exercise more control of spam and scams on verified accounts, including permab…

This is all speculation about what they could announce -- even most of the items in (1). You could always re-evaluate if these things come to pass. Once this initial plan rolls out, whether the check itself continues to hold value once it's open to anybody with $$$ depends on how users in the network use it. That's why I prefer to think in terms of the specific reach/advertising question. But we'll see! My own specul…

Oh, it's absolutely speculation. I won't be paying a dime until I think the value is there. Although I'm willing to speculate a bit... it's only a hundred bucks.

Getting ordinary users into advertising is their old game. My middling popular tweets all have a "Boost" button I can click. I've clicked it a few times, but they're looking for bigger campaigns than I have appetite for... $50/day, minimum two days, reach of only about 2,000 people each day. I'm not willing to throw away $100 on a two-day campaign that's very unlikely to move the needle in any meaningful way.

But, obviously, I am willing to throw away $100 to try a status symbol for a year... but only if it actually is a status symbol. The difference is the longevity. Nobody makes the decision to hire me after two days; they make the decision after seeing my content and name for months and years. Four thousand people seeing my name once is basically worthless to me. Fourteen thousand followers have a better chance of seeing my name for a year is quite likely to be worth it.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#974

Post by charlie0 »

paxys wrote: post #322
dan-robertson wrote: post #285

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…

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…

But if you are a frequent creator, you're also planning on making the content a viable financial venture. At the very least, Twitter is used as a marketing platform. Which means paying $8 a month for what is essentially free hosting for your marketing, is a no brainer.

I'm not sure why asking consumers to pay would be a good idea because we already have Patreon. Only a fraction of consumers would actually pay for content, so doing this would probably cause a lot of consumers to leave. Whereas the price for a content creator is very low, even at $20/month.

In other words, if you want the blue checkmark, you're definitely interested in the marketing yourself. So, why not pay for that privilege?

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#975

Post by boogies »

type-r wrote: post #301
morsch wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually all streaming services still have ads at the paid tier: sponsored content in YouTube videos, product placement everywhere, athletes that are living billboards.

SponsorBlock is key for YouTube

Much as Nitter / LibRedirect are essential for Twitter

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#976

Post by nomel »

perrygeo wrote: post #131
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…

> See: every streaming service The key difference is that streaming services purchase valuable content and resell it. There is obvious demand and the market clearly exists. Twitter provides little in the way of mass entertainment, unless you enjoy watching people argue with trolls in an algorithmically-created drama. The content is not created by twitter. There is no obvious market demand; the vast majority of people…

> the vast majority of people on the planet wouldn't bother using twitter even if it was free.

"wouldn't bother" should be "don't bother".

For the world, around 290 million [1], with an internet population of around 4 billion [2], that's around 7%.

Things are a bit better for the us, with 41.5 million active users [1], assuming they're all over 18 (209 million), that's about 20% of US population.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/10/25/twit...

2. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=number+...

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#978

Post by shepherdjerred »

jevgeni wrote: post #895
jstummbillig wrote: post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering they used "shower thoughts" to devalue the idea before factoring in Elons incredible track record (by company/capitalist metrics, no personal judgement required), I feel that you are being very generous towards OP.

Don't confuse overheated valuations with business success.

Do you not consider SpaceX, Starlink, or Tesla to be successful? I don't mean profitable; I mean something that is pushing humanity forward?

I know that Tesla has a lot of negative press due to autopilot (and rightly so), but they are still a leader in both self-driving and electric vehicles.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#979

Post by perrygeo »

nomel wrote: post #976
perrygeo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See: every streaming service The key difference is that streaming services purchase valuable content and resell it. There is obvious demand and the market clearly exists. Twitter provides little in the way of mass entertainment, unless you enjoy watching people argue with trolls in an algorithmically-created drama. The content is not created by twitter. There is no obvious market demand; the vast majority of people…

> the vast majority of people on the planet wouldn't bother using twitter even if it was free. "wouldn't bother" should be "don't bother". For the world, around 290 million [1], with an internet population of around 4 billion [2], that's around 7%. Things are a bit better for the us, with 41.5 million active users [1], assuming they're all over 18 (209 million), that's about 20% of US population. 1. https://www.forbe…

> "wouldn't bother" should be "don't bother"

excellent point - I should use the active present tense. That is: "most people alive today don't bother with twitter, despite the fact that it's free."

Is it "free" in other meanings of the word - free of charge, free speech, free expression, freedom of religion, freedom to lie, freedom to intimidate? Time will tell.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#980

Post by shepherdjerred »

jevgeni wrote: post #894
shepherdjerred wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you reconcile that view with Elon's successful ventures, e.g. the other Tesla's, Starlink, and SpaceX?

Massive gov subsidies. https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-201...

Are government subsidies bad? Why? Isn't Elon doing exactly what the government is intending which is to promote the development of technologies that are beneficial but not profitable/popular?

Hasn't this approach been proven successful with the current push towards solar and electric cars?

The article even says:

> The payoff for the public would come in the form of major pollution reductions, but only if solar panels and electric cars break through as viable mass-market products. For now, both remain niche products for mostly well-heeled customers.

Neither of these products are as niche today as they were in 2015 (when the article was written).

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