5 ms·

Twitter users have money because adults have money. The inability to make any value proposition worth paying for is almost admitting you're worthless. Per Jame

by unabst 11y ago

Twitter users have money because adults have money. The inability to make any value proposition worth paying for is almost admitting you're worthless. Per James Altucher, for my 10 ideas a day exercise: - Pay-to-view, pay-to-subscribe twitter accounts. Exclusivity always sells. - Twitter tools/analytics for fees. - Developer tools for fees. - Pay with your twitter account (we already login). - Paid tier for advanced users who manage multiple accounts. - BUY straight off a tweet. - Sell API access to power users (rate limit tiers). - Remove ads for a fee. - Push twitter search, and sell more ads on increased searches. - Sell themselves to facebook. These are all pretty obvious, so they must have reasons not so obvious not to do them. One would guess twitter's brainstorm meetings are veto-fests just from their lack of interest in doing anything interesting or progressive... but maybe they just don't sweat it because they're sitting on 3B cash. (that must be it)

coldtea 11y ago
Most of these are "tried and failed again and again" attempts that have been "obvious" since 1999. Sure, they could sell "no ads", "exclusive accounts", "developer tools", etc. None of these will entice enough users to be remotely worth it -- as it hasn't worked in most other platforms. This is for something at the scale of Basecamp or Automattic to make money, not Twitter.
- kmnc 11y ago
  Your probably correct, none of these solutions in this thread could actually beat the advertising model even if that isn't profitable for them and trying them isn't worth the risk. It just seems weird to me that twitter basically owns the fanclub for every celebrity in the world and can't monetize access.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >It just seems weird to me that twitter basically owns the fanclub for every celebrity in the world and can't monetize access. I think the problem is they don't own the fanclub. Only part of it. Fans also go to: the artist's webpage, the artists YouTube channel (or YT in general), the artist's Facebook, and places like Spotify, Apple Music etc, even places like Reddit for AMA, news sites for interviews, etc. If Twitter had managed to create and provide a full blown artist/entity "fanclub" experience they would probably fare much better. Just seeing artists "tweets" wont cut it.
- Reedx 11y ago
  Right. If there was a monetization model that worked as well as ads, they would do it in a heartbeat. And so would the entire web. Unfortunately that doesn't exist yet... No one who runs a web site actually likes putting ads on it. They detract from the content, affect usability and it's more overhead. But it's done because it's the only thing that pays for the site's existence.
- unabst 11y ago
  I can see how none of these would be the silver bullet, but I can't see how scale is the problem. If you're too big, then, what? Are you saying their burden for profit is too big? The burden they have a reputation for ignoring? And yes, many businesses employing various models have failed, but none of them were twitter. No one is twitter. Part of it might be the silver bullet syndrome with a hint of exceptionalism. You save it all for that one perfect "exceptional" solution because anything else would be beneath you. Except, how do you know one even exists, or has to exist? Why not just make incremental progress, and run with what takes off? They seem to have chosen ads as their silver bullet, but it failed to exceed expectations. Now what? The lack of experimentation in the area of services seems almost dysfunctional compared to their willingness to experiment with the interface, their fonts, their top page... all of which are far from exceptional. What you want from a company like Twitter is at minimum the appearance of effort, of vision, and of competence. Wow, I'm not sure any of those apply right now... No wonder the CEO fired all those people.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >I can see how none of these would be the silver bullet, but I can't see how scale is the problem. In two senses: 1) Regardless of scale, those solutions don't bring much money in. Twitter's bigger scale means they can bring more money than for a smaller company, but Twitter's scale also means it's operating expenses and churn are much higher for them to make a difference. 2) Twitter's value is in its user base, which is staying given that Twitter doesn't alienate them, which some of those solutions do. In this case it's not really the number of users that's the issue, but the kind of users that you attrack.
    - unabst 11y ago
      1) But don't they also have an advantage with economies of scale? Maybe anything below x million isn't worth it, but cost-wise they should definitely have an advantage. And why not try them at least. 2) Right. Except ads definitely alienate users and detract from the experience. So the solution they've chosen isn't necessarily a decision conscious of this. None of the items in my list really detract from existing user experience. They're all extras. If Kanye decides to charge $100 because he can, that's on Kanye alienating his users, not twitter. Building capabilities and increasing capacity seems like a clear path of progress to me, except twitter has yet to step foot in that direction it seems. Tons of money is being made on twitter, except by twitter. Very strange. Of course, having tons of cash in the bank is the perfect excuse to not do anything. Waiting for an epiphany maybe... Everyone is waiting.
- majani 11y ago
  And there lies Twitter's main problem, along with a lot of other startups. Many tech companies should just be small or medium sized. The underlying opportunity was not as enormous as investors predicted. But they've raised billions of dollars now, so they have to at least appear to be trying to force the issue.
tibbon 11y ago
At this point, they'd have to pay me as a developer to ever do anything on their API again.
- m3rc 11y ago
  Haven't they just about alienated all developers at this point with their ridiculous token system?
  - tibbon 11y ago
    Not just that. They keep changing the capabilities/limits, have gotten harder to reach over the years, and have done some pretty direct back-stabbing things to developers and shut down good projects. Unless you're willing to pay them huge money, then getting stuff like Firehose access is impossible.

by unabst 11y ago

coldtea 11y ago

Most of these are "tried and failed again and again" attempts that have been "obvious" since 1999. Sure, they could sell "no ads", "exclusive accounts", "developer tools", etc. None of these will entice enough users to be remotely worth it -- as it hasn't worked in most other platforms. This is for something at the scale of Basecamp or Automattic to make money, not Twitter.

kmnc 11y ago
Your probably correct, none of these solutions in this thread could actually beat the advertising model even if that isn't profitable for them and trying them isn't worth the risk. It just seems weird to me that twitter basically owns the fanclub for every celebrity in the world and can't monetize access.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >It just seems weird to me that twitter basically owns the fanclub for every celebrity in the world and can't monetize access. I think the problem is they don't own the fanclub. Only part of it. Fans also go to: the artist's webpage, the artists YouTube channel (or YT in general), the artist's Facebook, and places like Spotify, Apple Music etc, even places like Reddit for AMA, news sites for interviews, etc. If Twitter had managed to create and provide a full blown artist/entity "fanclub" experience they would probably fare much better. Just seeing artists "tweets" wont cut it.
Reedx 11y ago
Right. If there was a monetization model that worked as well as ads, they would do it in a heartbeat. And so would the entire web. Unfortunately that doesn't exist yet... No one who runs a web site actually likes putting ads on it. They detract from the content, affect usability and it's more overhead. But it's done because it's the only thing that pays for the site's existence.
unabst 11y ago
I can see how none of these would be the silver bullet, but I can't see how scale is the problem. If you're too big, then, what? Are you saying their burden for profit is too big? The burden they have a reputation for ignoring? And yes, many businesses employing various models have failed, but none of them were twitter. No one is twitter. Part of it might be the silver bullet syndrome with a hint of exceptionalism. You save it all for that one perfect "exceptional" solution because anything else would be beneath you. Except, how do you know one even exists, or has to exist? Why not just make incremental progress, and run with what takes off? They seem to have chosen ads as their silver bullet, but it failed to exceed expectations. Now what? The lack of experimentation in the area of services seems almost dysfunctional compared to their willingness to experiment with the interface, their fonts, their top page... all of which are far from exceptional. What you want from a company like Twitter is at minimum the appearance of effort, of vision, and of competence. Wow, I'm not sure any of those apply right now... No wonder the CEO fired all those people.
- coldtea 11y ago
  >I can see how none of these would be the silver bullet, but I can't see how scale is the problem. In two senses: 1) Regardless of scale, those solutions don't bring much money in. Twitter's bigger scale means they can bring more money than for a smaller company, but Twitter's scale also means it's operating expenses and churn are much higher for them to make a difference. 2) Twitter's value is in its user base, which is staying given that Twitter doesn't alienate them, which some of those solutions do. In this case it's not really the number of users that's the issue, but the kind of users that you attrack.
  - unabst 11y ago
    1) But don't they also have an advantage with economies of scale? Maybe anything below x million isn't worth it, but cost-wise they should definitely have an advantage. And why not try them at least. 2) Right. Except ads definitely alienate users and detract from the experience. So the solution they've chosen isn't necessarily a decision conscious of this. None of the items in my list really detract from existing user experience. They're all extras. If Kanye decides to charge $100 because he can, that's on Kanye alienating his users, not twitter. Building capabilities and increasing capacity seems like a clear path of progress to me, except twitter has yet to step foot in that direction it seems. Tons of money is being made on twitter, except by twitter. Very strange. Of course, having tons of cash in the bank is the perfect excuse to not do anything. Waiting for an epiphany maybe... Everyone is waiting.
majani 11y ago
And there lies Twitter's main problem, along with a lot of other startups. Many tech companies should just be small or medium sized. The underlying opportunity was not as enormous as investors predicted. But they've raised billions of dollars now, so they have to at least appear to be trying to force the issue.

tibbon 11y ago

At this point, they'd have to pay me as a developer to ever do anything on their API again.

m3rc 11y ago
Haven't they just about alienated all developers at this point with their ridiculous token system?
- tibbon 11y ago
  Not just that. They keep changing the capabilities/limits, have gotten harder to reach over the years, and have done some pretty direct back-stabbing things to developers and shut down good projects. Unless you're willing to pay them huge money, then getting stuff like Firehose access is impossible.