5 ms·

Super hypothetically, Twitter could monetize something like Reddit Gold, basically as a form of "super upvote/retweet".

tyingq 10y ago
I'd pay if it had the effect where anyone mentioned with @whoever in the tweet would then have it pinned on their page, given enough gold.
- koolba 10y ago
  My initial thought is this would only be used to spam/harass people but if it's tied to actual money maybe it'd be enough of a barrier to be semi usable.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    They could sell antigold too. Or maybe semi hide it behind a "related gold tweets" tab. I assume there's a pretty bad dark side, but it would enable a "premium customer support" of sorts...A very visible complaints box. Would have been interesting in the Susan Fowler tweet. Would have cost Uber quite a bit of antigold to take that down
Cyph0n 10y ago
That's actually a pretty smart idea. But the subscription idea seems pretty weak to me. I mean, how many people actually have 1 million+ followers to pay $99/month?
- goatherders 10y ago
  Kylie Jenner would be 1k per month Ronaldo would be 5k per month Trump would be 2600 per month There are a few
  - OriginalPenguin 10y ago
    Ever since Trump became President, I've started checking Twitter every day, just to see what he says. I imagine there are at least a million others that have been brought back to twitter just to see what Trump says. If he doesn't pay, then twitter loses all those eyeballs. That seems like a loss for twitter. I don't see how this will work.
    - Pxtl 10y ago
      And Trump does seem like the type who'd say "what, you're billing me? Well I'm going to build my own microblogging platform... with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the microblogging."
      - halfdan 10y ago
        > "Well I'm going to build my own microblogging platform..." "..and it's gonna be the greatest microblogging platform, and we're gonna make Twitter pay for it!"
  - mpeg 10y ago
    So you're saying with your idea Twitter, a company with 4000+ employees, can make around $10k MRR from its largest customers.
Pxtl 10y ago
Yeah, I was thinking a similar thing, but making it more direct: I follow lots of "creatives" on twitter - webcomic artists, bloggers, opensource contributors, citizen journalists, etc. A quick "tip jar" feature in Twitter would be great. Buy up something like Flattr and bake it into the UI.
- elvinyung 10y ago
  Holy crap, this is a great idea. Building a Patreon-style paid content/subscription platform on top of Twitter seems worth exploring. By all means Twitter probably already has the userbase for it.
  - L_Rahman 10y ago
    This is what Twitter was supposed to be - the social graph, identity, trust, and payments layer for applications to build on top off. With Facebook going the closed garden route, there was a real opportunity for a network player to play the open strategy.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      > With Facebook going the closed garden route, there was a real opportunity for a network player to play the open strategy. There still is. If there's real irreplaceable value in the platform itself, such as with a mechanism like that, then making the client and network bits more open and protocol-based would help them.
    - type0 10y ago
      It supposed to be that, but I lost my hope for openness of Twitter when they removed RSS feeds...
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    Absolutely agreed, this is brilliant. Ideally partner with Patreon to bootstrap it, but allow anyone with a Twitter account to have patrons. (That also gets more people providing payment information, useful for other future purposes, such as making "sign in with Twitter" support "pay with Twitter".) Then start combining that with a Patreon-style "patron posts" mechanism, increase the limits on "patron posts", and perhaps later introduce a "circles"-like mechanism for non-patron accounts.

I'd pay if it had the effect where anyone mentioned with @whoever in the tweet would then have it pinned on their page, given enough gold.

koolba 10y ago
My initial thought is this would only be used to spam/harass people but if it's tied to actual money maybe it'd be enough of a barrier to be semi usable.
- tyingq 10y ago
  They could sell antigold too. Or maybe semi hide it behind a "related gold tweets" tab. I assume there's a pretty bad dark side, but it would enable a "premium customer support" of sorts...A very visible complaints box. Would have been interesting in the Susan Fowler tweet. Would have cost Uber quite a bit of antigold to take that down

Cyph0n 10y ago

That's actually a pretty smart idea. But the subscription idea seems pretty weak to me. I mean, how many people actually have 1 million+ followers to pay $99/month?

goatherders 10y ago
Kylie Jenner would be 1k per month Ronaldo would be 5k per month Trump would be 2600 per month There are a few
- OriginalPenguin 10y ago
  Ever since Trump became President, I've started checking Twitter every day, just to see what he says. I imagine there are at least a million others that have been brought back to twitter just to see what Trump says. If he doesn't pay, then twitter loses all those eyeballs. That seems like a loss for twitter. I don't see how this will work.
  - Pxtl 10y ago
    And Trump does seem like the type who'd say "what, you're billing me? Well I'm going to build my own microblogging platform... with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the microblogging."
    - halfdan 10y ago
      > "Well I'm going to build my own microblogging platform..." "..and it's gonna be the greatest microblogging platform, and we're gonna make Twitter pay for it!"
- mpeg 10y ago
  So you're saying with your idea Twitter, a company with 4000+ employees, can make around $10k MRR from its largest customers.

Pxtl 10y ago

Yeah, I was thinking a similar thing, but making it more direct: I follow lots of "creatives" on twitter - webcomic artists, bloggers, opensource contributors, citizen journalists, etc. A quick "tip jar" feature in Twitter would be great. Buy up something like Flattr and bake it into the UI.

elvinyung 10y ago
Holy crap, this is a great idea. Building a Patreon-style paid content/subscription platform on top of Twitter seems worth exploring. By all means Twitter probably already has the userbase for it.
- L_Rahman 10y ago
  This is what Twitter was supposed to be - the social graph, identity, trust, and payments layer for applications to build on top off. With Facebook going the closed garden route, there was a real opportunity for a network player to play the open strategy.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > With Facebook going the closed garden route, there was a real opportunity for a network player to play the open strategy. There still is. If there's real irreplaceable value in the platform itself, such as with a mechanism like that, then making the client and network bits more open and protocol-based would help them.
  - type0 10y ago
    It supposed to be that, but I lost my hope for openness of Twitter when they removed RSS feeds...
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Absolutely agreed, this is brilliant. Ideally partner with Patreon to bootstrap it, but allow anyone with a Twitter account to have patrons. (That also gets more people providing payment information, useful for other future purposes, such as making "sign in with Twitter" support "pay with Twitter".) Then start combining that with a Patreon-style "patron posts" mechanism, increase the limits on "patron posts", and perhaps later introduce a "circles"-like mechanism for non-patron accounts.