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Twitter Blue for $8/Month

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Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#981

Post by shepherdjerred »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #661
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?

I'm not OP but I think that they said that Elon sounds like a bad PM to work under, not that he's unsuccessful at developing and marketing products

I replied to OP but the question was pointed to a broader audience. Many on HN have _very_ negative feelings for Elon.

He's a pretty crazy guy, but I can think of few people/companies who are doing things that could have as big of an impact as Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX.

I understand how you could have doubts with Tesla, but that how could those feelings not dissolve when seeing those reusable boosters land on their own? How many other organizations could do such a thing?

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#982

Post by sedatk »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #963
sedatk wrote: post #878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paid users will get priority over unpaid users in replies as Elon explained.

And? what does that have to do with poor people? The entire economy is run on charging money. Are you saying “Kellogg is telling poor people to starve for charging for cereal!” Or is there something special about twitter for you to complain about? Why are poor people entitled to free twitter? They’re not entitled to free cars or free smartphones or free Netflix or free WhatsApp business accounts or free Fastmail or f…

> entire economy is run on charging money

Explain the existence of libraries, parks, and medicare to me then.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#983

Post by tmellon2 »

Does someone have a better sense of economics of charging $8/Month ?

At best assuming approximately the 420,000 [see Ref.1] folks currently on twitter will pay $8/Month - which gives about $40 Million in *annual* revenue.

Will the economics work if the advertisers stay out ?

Also, why charge in the first place if the number is too low ( Source : [1] https://www.statista.com/chart/28633/verified-users-on-twitt...

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#984

Post by mikestaub »

Elon should not couple revenue generation with identity verification. Their should be a "Twitter Green" that lets users link a credit card to charge a one-time $1 fee. Twitter blue should allow power-users to customize their feed algorithm and be $20 per month.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#985

Post by jevgeni »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #980
jevgeni wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 panel…

I'm not arguing against subsidies.

But, claiming that SpaceX, Tesla, or Musk personally were uniquely competitive, successful, or disruptive while they had a buffer of 5bn USD in the back pocket is misleading.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#986

Post by jevgeni »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #978
jevgeni wrote: post #895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If these companies push humanity forward? Honestly, I'm a bit on the fence about that. Tesla was disruptive in a sense that it made car manufacturers massively accelerate their EV plans. But do I see any continued impact? Not really.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#987

Post by ianferrel »

bumby wrote: post #626
ianferrel wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not feel good about their creature comforts, but indoor plumbing is an objective luxury to a great extent. It is objectively better to not have to go out in the cold to take a shit at night, even if you're "poor".

I considered that before posting, but what made me ultimately disagree is that well-being is not objective. It is very often completely subjective. Consider that fact that at one point in the past you probably thought what you have now would make you happy. And maybe for a short time you were. But invariably that feeling of well-being wanes. You can say your new car is objectively better than your old one, yet after…

>You can say your new car is objectively better than your old one, yet after having it a few years it feels exactly like the previous vehicle from the standpoint about how much it contributes to your well-being.

I agree with your point on human psychology, but survivorship bias is relevant here.

One way in which my new car is objectively better is that it has better safety features, which makes me less likely to die in a crash. My feelings about it may well normalize over time, but only if I survive long enough.

The correlation is not perfect, but lots of creature comforts actively make us live longer. In addition to the comfort of pooping indoors, indoor plumbing also makes it easier to wash your hands with warm water afterward, harder to trip and fall on the trip to the outhouse, both of which make you live longer. The people who die don't get to psychologically adjust to their premature deaths.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#988

Post by scoot »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #668
dshpala wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take those silly doors any day over some designed-by-committe boring car. Like stupid bean-shaped electric Mercedes for example.

Wait till it freezes in winter. Those doors are great, till they’re covered in a small layer of ice. The doors are an interesting example since they always seemed strictly worse than the traditional design, unlike the rest of the car.

> unlike the rest of the car

A touchscreen is objectively worse than traditional physical controls for operations that need to be performed while concentrating on driving.

Teslas are also not known for the quality of their manufacturing, although that's a different kind of design issue.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#989

Post by shepherdjerred »

jevgeni wrote: post #986
shepherdjerred wrote: post #978

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If these companies push humanity forward? Honestly, I'm a bit on the fence about that. Tesla was disruptive in a sense that it made car manufacturers massively accelerate their EV plans. But do I see any continued impact? Not really.

I know that there are _plenty_ of other electric car manufacturers, and electric cars would eventually become popular, but Tesla making it happen _n_ years faster is an overwhelmingly good thing.

There's also a lot of potential (depending on who you ask) for autopilot, although I think it was a mistake to switch from lidar to pure computer vision. Time will tell.

Re: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

#990

Post by shepherdjerred »

jevgeni wrote: post #985
shepherdjerred wrote: post #980

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 panel…

I'm not arguing against subsidies. But, claiming that SpaceX, Tesla, or Musk personally were uniquely competitive, successful, or disruptive while they had a buffer of 5bn USD in the back pocket is misleading.

Having a boatload of cash does not guarantee success. Elon positioned himself well to compete in areas that would receive those subsidies, and then used that money to create rocketships and electric cars.

I'm sure you can find _plenty_ of examples of people spending billions less effectively, e.g. the city of Boston spending $22 billion on a tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

I'm not saying he's a genius or unprecedented, just that he is successful, and that his success was not guaranteed.

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