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 way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all. See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming services have ads, but for most online content - video, journalism, etc, if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just nickle-and-diming users to give them a bunch of ads, particularly when the marginal cost for Twitter Blue is essentially zero).
The ugly:
Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation. At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter, at worst this is ripe for abuse.
The people willing to pay, the heavy users, are also the people most engaged and posting content on the platform. Content that twitter needs for less heavy users to consume, bringing in eyeballs for advertisers.
Continuing to show ads to paying content creators is double-dipping.
I'd expect those two to intersect for sure, but I imagine there are plenty of people with enough disposable cash that enjoy twitter but contribute very little. Or maybe I am just an extreme outlier :)
I doubt $8 will be the only option. I’d bet $1000 that there will be a $16 (or whatever the ROI bar is) tier to be completely ad free.
$8 entry fee seems reasonable from a pyscological perspective. It sounds like the modern version of $9.99, since 3 numbers is taboo on the Twitter style internet and 8 sounds better than 9
They _should_ have the corp version. Corp accounts (@corp_name) should be like $1000/year or something like that (probably could charge $10,000 and more). Nike, Coke, Dell, Disney, etc.
You know — that is a genuinely good idea. It's easily the best monetization idea for Twitter I've heard, especially amidst the last decade of nonsense about "brand advertising" and "blue checkmarks."
Just one thing — add a couple more zeros. $100k/yr is not unreasonable for an enterprise offering here. They could introduce all kinds of B2B features for companies that want to use Twitter as a support forum (or, given Twitter's popularity, are forced into using it as a support forum).
Off the top of my head — things like rolling up different sub-accounts under one main corporate account, formalizing the ability for multiple support staff to work one account (and charge per seat!), having deeper integration with Zendesk and other ticketing systems, extracting metrics and showing dashboards for how support (and sentiment) is doing, introducing some AI/ML to help companies match Twitter accounts of their customers to internal customer IDs, enabling ML-powered DMing of targeted offers, introducing chatbots that can be trained to field support queries over DM, etc, etc.
Anyway, it's a really good idea. Maybe you should've bought Twitter.
Basically a tier for global brands that manage multiple regional accounts and need top level support. Which I'm sure already exists informally like all B2B SaaS sites that have listed monthly fees where big accounts are handled personally.
But more to your point I think there should be a paid bracket below that tier of global mega corps which is formalized and public. At least for transparency and marketing reasons.
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 amount of absolute revenue because there are so few.
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.
Similar to how the CTR of ads on msn.com or live.com was once way higher than everywhere else because anyone who was fooled in to using those default start pages was probably more easily fooled in all aspects.
> Paying $8 [...] At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter
Really? That seems completely contrary to my experience. In every online community I've seen, a higher barrier to entry has always been positively correlated with the quality of the conversation.
Not saying there won't be downsides to this, but I very much doubt a lower quality of conversation will be one of them.
But it's not a higher barrier to entry – you can read and respond freely. It's a higher barrier to having a good experience, which I can't think of many successful examples of to be honest.
You can already filter out non-verified mentions and replies. Presumably that's not going away, and will be used by far more people after this change. It very much is a barrier to entry.
But the verified mention is no longer a verified mention. It’s a paid mention.
And the people most likely to pay to ensure that their responses are seen broadly are narcissists and people who want to sell you stuff like their latest get rich quick scheme, newsletter
Subscription, etc.
Actual verified users will dwindle in comparisons and the value of filtering out non “verified” responses will plummet.
Sure, but I hope as mainly a reader of Twitter this change comes along with a box I can check that says 'only show Tweets from people I follow and those who are verified'. Overnight, most of my bot issues are fixed. And, any people I don't want to hear from again are easily blocked.
Yup. I'm gonna keep drumming this up: most markets today are supplier-driven. The "barrier to having a good experience" gets higher, and the experience gets worse, and there's shit all you can do about it, because you're only able to choose out of what's on the market, and the market isn't serving lower barrier / better experience options it did a month, year or decade ago.
> and the market isn't serving lower barrier / better experience options it did a month, year or decade ago.
That's irrelevant, and very often false. But the options offered by the market at any given time are generally better at higher price points, which is, oddly, exactly what the commenter upthread was outraged by.
> It's a higher barrier to having a good experience, which I can't think of many successful examples of to be honest.
The way I read the poster is that they think being asked to pay more will create worse experience, which is implied to be stupid. Except it isn't, it's literally what's happening in every market all the time. Getting people to pay more for worse product is entirely normal, and the way it usually works is by removing the option to keep paying the same amount for the product they currently enjoy.
>> It's a higher barrier to having a good experience, which I can't think of many successful examples of to be honest.
> The way I read the poster is that they think being asked to pay more will create worse experience
That is something they say, but the quote you pulled isn't related to it. You were looking for this one:
>> At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter
But they never bother to justify that.
> which is implied to be stupid.
The quote you pulled is stupid. Nothing is more common than successful examples of placing a higher barrier in front of the good experience than there is in front of the bad experience.
I never justified it because that quote is nowhere in my comment.
Regardless, it’s not as “stupid” as you claim. How many social networks have added a premium tier for non commercial users, while degrading the quality of the free tier and been successful?
Closest I can think of are dating apps, which have a unique driver behind them that Twitter doesn’t have.
Some users (US users, or those willing to pay $8/mo for Twitter) are generating multiple times the average revenue per user. People in poorer countries are generating less than the average revenue per user.
On Facebook, for instance, US users bring in 5x the worldwide average revenue per user.
That is why it's only a reduction in ads. This deal reduces their revenue per user if they went ad free for those users.
>making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change
Where does he say there will be any verification around ID? Twitter needs to make sure that I can't just name my account @WhiteHouseCommunications and pay $8 to get a blue checkmark. The whole point of the blue checkmark was to personally review those accounts to make sure they are who they say they are. Is Twitter still going to put in this manual effort for a greater base of verified users especially after they seemingly plan to downsize staff?
Yeah, that strikes me as the real problem with this plan. Setting aside all the criticisms that can be made of how Twitter has handled verification (and "de-verification") in the past, the point of being verified was to signal "Twitter, the company, has a high degree of confidence that this account is who or what they claim to be," not to signal "Twitter, the company, is getting eight bucks a month from whoever this person is".
The conflating of an authentically derived status ("This person is real") with a paid form of status both defeats the purpose of the first, and is somewhat telling about a particular mindset.
That isn't how verification currently works and I can't imagine that is how Twitter would want it to work in the future. People change their display name all the time on Twitter and can even change their username. Plus Facebook has already shown that real name policies are hard and can cause user pushback and that was with a community that already is more lined up with our real life identities. Pseudonymous accounts are a huge part of Twitter.
Plenty of streaming services have ad-supported versions that are in this price range (e.g. Hulu, HBO Max). I don't disagree that having ads at all on Twitter Blue is bad, but I'm not sure the comparison with streaming services works.
But every streaming service* has to pay for content, either license or create - on Twitter, the users generate the content. In my mind the costs to acquire content are much lower for twitter. They have other technological challenges, some similar, some dissimilar to video streamers, but content wise, Twitter doesn't pay for anything.
* Youtube premium has a mix of user content and licenced content but doesn't have ads (other than live reads which don't count here)
I dont think twitter is anywhere near Netflix or even youtube premium in terms of what it provides. And I am saying it as someone who do actually uses twitter (unlike half of HN who claims to never use it).
> See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming services have ads, but for most online content - video, journalism, etc, if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just nickle-and-diming users to give them a bunch of ads, particularly when the marginal cost for Twitter Blue is essentially zero).
Even after your edit, this isn't true. NYTimes includes ads in their paid subscription products. AFAIK, most premium news and editorial still includes ads. It's not nearly as many or as intrusive as the free pubs like NYPost, but there's still ads even though I'm paying $20/mo for NYTimes
"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, then maybe you don't derive enough value from conversation because you are mostly a consumption user. So you continue as you do today, consuming and occasionally replying to tweets but hardly ever having your response seen or acknowledged.
> 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.
I disagree. Diverse input results in better conversations – less of an echo chamber, less black and white thinking, more visibility for other viewpoints, more empathy.
There is diversity among people who want to spend $8/mo on Twitter, but there is far more by definition among all Twitter users. Plus you're likely to discriminate against already marginalised groups in most regions, as marginalised groups (whatever the categorisation) tend to have less disposable income.
>I disagree. Diverse input results in better conversations – less of an echo chamber, less black and white thinking, more visibility for other viewpoints, more empathy.
But how many different people are necessary to give the diversity of thought on a particular topic? I bet it is not many, certainly fewer than 100, maybe 50, or on some topics even just 20.
I totally disagree. If you actually contribute to a conversation (which means saying something which is considered relevant by the people taking part in it - not just saying something random) people will reply to you or share your views or just add a like (or platform equivalent), thus making your voice heard.
On the other hand, paying to boost your tweet regardless of its actual value is going to be a great tool for spammers, troll or people who really care more about saying something than they care about its utility to the conversation. This will definitely drive down quality (and I'm ready to bet that browser extensions to just block out anything from paid users will start popping up).
Nah. Basically, who will loose are topical experts who tweeted about what they knew well about. Layers tweeting about law, developers tweeting about frameworks, academics tweeting about crypto, viruses, history. These wont pay and will be less visible.
These topical experts as you put it, make more than $8/month today from their engaged audiences. What Twitter should do is build better engagement tools for them and then monetize that at much more than $8/month.
You think Stephen King, who is worth $500m, is going to drop Twitter for $96/year. That tweet itself was him doing a good job of using that platform (twitter) and his audience to get some free exposure.
Lol, no they don't. They are not rich and they live on fixed or unrelated salaries.
Stephen King is not subject matter expert. He is popular writer. He is also quite atypical in that he is so popular, then he really don't end twitter engagement all that much. I don't know whether he will ultimately pay, but he actually don't have to.
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.
But the people who would pay $8 dollars, regardless of finances, derive enough value from being bluechecked in the first place. Paying the money would fulfill would fulfill a higher rung of their hierarchy of needs than it would for most others.
That'll immediately remove a lot of useful contributors, including journalists in developing countries, people working on interesting things in niche areas, and so many others.
Every network analysis of Twitter shows that the majority of people are not all engaging just with the blue checks or the most popular accounts. There's a huge long tail that keeps most users on the platform.
Please do realize that $8 is something completely different for a Norwegian than a Bangladeshi. For one it's the cost of a beer, for the other, the wages of days work.
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.
My guess is that the $8/mo user pool is a target demo for advertisers who like people who like subscriptions. And there can be a premium charge for targeting the $8 burger
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 on the planet wouldn't bother using twitter even if it was free.
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.
I do wonder whether their days are numbered though. I can see it going one of two ways – full ban of all third party clients, or a far more open API. Musk is so unpredictable, both would appear to fit his viewpoints on these things.
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?
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".
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.
You do in fact need to prove your identity if you want to trade on binance. (KYC requirement.) So I don't see why they would have a problem with making people prove their identity for a bluecheck.
Yeah, there were ads in Newspapers and Magazines too that you paid money.
There is an entire generation of entitled people who grew up in 0% VC-funded businesses who are accustomed to getting great products for free who have to adjust to the reality of cost of capital.
> Yeah, there were ads in Newspapers and Magazines too that you paid money.
The publishers of those paid for the content, paid for editing, paid for the physical medium, paid for physical distribution.
Twitter is distributing short pieces of text, some images and video on a medium that is famously cheaper than everything that came before it, while not paying anything to the authors and has no editors.
There's nothing good. When everyone can buy a checkmark, it becomes nothing.
The next step is "only allow replies from blue checkmarks"
both are bad ideas, and solely because of musk's obsession with bots. Without a mob to prop up people with retweets, twitter will be useless. You cant have the good parts without the ugly parts
Everyone can’t buy a checkmark. Bots will be almost impossible to scale at $8/mo, which means if you deprioritize or hide content from bots without the check, Twitter has a realistic shot at eliminating the bot problem.
Bots are probably a very big problem for a small subset of Twitter users, like Musk himself, who is positively swarmed with them. But the median Twitter user is unlikely to care about this problem to the tune of several dollars a month. I get a crypto spam message about once every other day. I wouldn't pay anything to take care of that problem, because it's just not big enough to care about.
I think it's more likely that the real goal of this "Twitter Blue" proposal is to start getting users to pay for bling. Which could work! It certainly works in gaming communities.
Certainly, services for current blue-checks can't be a big part of the plan here, because of:
(1) The Stephen King problem, which is the (correct) observation that people like King are adding far more value to Twitter than they extract from it, and are reasonably not inclined to ante anything up to Musk.
(2) There aren't enough of them to make a dent in Twitter's cash flows.
If you took away the publicity angle (which Elon Musk can't take away but we can hypothetically), Stephen King's social media professionals might pay $800/month and not even tell him if that's what helped accomplish their goals.
checkmarks mean prestige, exclusivity, and validation. public figures and journalists love prestige, they live for it. twitter just removed one thing that made it attractive to them. being able to buy it means it s useless for anything other than removing spam
that s a very odd way to remove spam . and personally i dont see twitter bots because i dont go searching for them. Musk is completely obsessed with the wrong problem
checkmarks ALSO mean you are who you say you are. making them a feature of Twitter Blue (note: one feature of Twitter Blue) eliminates any status that might have been conferred in the past, yes, but it also goes a long way to sorting legitimate from fake users.
They are who you say you are - assuming you can do proper verification of individual identity and affiliation, authorization to represent a business or brand, etc. for some portion of that first $8 payment.
> When everyone can buy a checkmark, it becomes nothing
Where does it say everyone can buy a checkmark without verification? I read this as everyone can be verified, which is a good thing. And, it will go a long way to killing off the bots.
I assume a small fraction would pay $8/mo for Twitter. Limiting who can reply seems like a useful feature - I think this already exists for "only people I follow".
Virtually all streaming services still have ads at the paid tier: sponsored content in YouTube videos, product placement everywhere, athletes that are living billboards.
Netflix has ad-tier coming for $7/month. HBO Max costs like $16/month. I get ads for Hulu, but that costs only $.99/month on Black Friday deal. I'm paying $80/year for Disney, and I think Apple is still charging only $5/month. So....I don't know, $8 doesn't feel that ridiculously out of line priced.
Those companies all spend money to create and/or license content. Twitter seems to want users to pay $8/mo and continue to see ads for the privilege of creating the content that brings users to Twitter?
Yes? It's actually better for Twitter because they can get pocket most of the money.
Companies aren't voluntarily charging barely enough to cover costs - they're being forced to do it by competition. Normally, they'll charge you as much as they can get away with.
It would be news if Twitter, or anyone else for that matter, decided to voluntarily charge less for the sake of fairness to the users.
That's not it. Twitter is used for marketing by many (esp businesses but also individuals) so they will pay to better market themselves. The same way that LinkedIn charges money even thought they don't create anything besides the platform.
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 way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all. See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming services have ads, but for most online content - video, journalism, etc, if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just nickle-and-diming users to give them a bunch of ads, particularly when the marginal cost for Twitter Blue is essentially zero).
The ugly:
Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation. At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter, at worst this is ripe for abuse.