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“I’m rich relative to the mean Twitter audience, please ruin your business model for something that is privilege at best and crypto-HN virtue signaling at worst

“I’m rich relative to the mean Twitter audience, please ruin your business model for something that is privilege at best and crypto-HN virtue signaling at worst.” It’s been awhile since I’ve had the chance to measure the caliber of Twitter’s finance quants, but last I knew it was pretty fucking hard to get past the phone screen for that job. I enjoyed jousting with them.

wpietri 8y ago
Oh, please. Twitter's average revenue per user is something like $2-3 per quarter. Your notion that you have to be some kind of Scrooge McDuck to spend $25/year on a Twitter Premium subscription is ridiculous. Jamming "virtue signaling" into places where it doesn't fit is its own kind of virtue signaling.
- hdhddidxhxcj 8y ago
  Given Twatters ongoing censorship of all things outside their authoritarian militant left wing circle jerk view mentality, I am surprised there is much left to show or even report on?
- sidr 8y ago
  Even amongst those who say they would pay $25/year for Twitter premium, we'd first have to account for stated vs. revealed preferences of how many would actually pay. I can't speak about you as an individual, but study after study has shown that this can be a huge effect. And keep in mind, this is only among privacy minded tech people. The vast majority of social media users do not give a shit about this (and will explicitly say so). Also, I imagine the people who are willing to pay for Twitter premium are highly correlated with the people who constantly rail about social media and threaten to quit/actually do quit. For those people, switching to a paid model is just going to provide the impetus to go ahead and quit anyway. All of which serve to bring the per user expenses up, but then increasing the cost of online services usually prompts a huge hue and cry (see: every time Netflix ups their prices), so you can't keep up with inflation even. And so people start quitting, and then due to network effects everyone else also starts quitting and the service dies. This is not in Twitter/Facebook's best interest and rest assured, they will not ever do it.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    I don't think anybody's suggesting Twitter move to only having a paid offering, which I agree would be fatal. I also suspect the market of people who really would pay is not large enough for them to bother with, but it depends on what they put in the premium version. Dropping ads is easy to implement, but is a niche market. On the other hand, being able to create private spaces could be huge. And they do a decent business in access to data that nobody seems to mind.

wpietri 8y ago

Oh, please. Twitter's average revenue per user is something like $2-3 per quarter. Your notion that you have to be some kind of Scrooge McDuck to spend $25/year on a Twitter Premium subscription is ridiculous. Jamming "virtue signaling" into places where it doesn't fit is its own kind of virtue signaling.

hdhddidxhxcj 8y ago
Given Twatters ongoing censorship of all things outside their authoritarian militant left wing circle jerk view mentality, I am surprised there is much left to show or even report on?
sidr 8y ago
Even amongst those who say they would pay $25/year for Twitter premium, we'd first have to account for stated vs. revealed preferences of how many would actually pay. I can't speak about you as an individual, but study after study has shown that this can be a huge effect. And keep in mind, this is only among privacy minded tech people. The vast majority of social media users do not give a shit about this (and will explicitly say so). Also, I imagine the people who are willing to pay for Twitter premium are highly correlated with the people who constantly rail about social media and threaten to quit/actually do quit. For those people, switching to a paid model is just going to provide the impetus to go ahead and quit anyway. All of which serve to bring the per user expenses up, but then increasing the cost of online services usually prompts a huge hue and cry (see: every time Netflix ups their prices), so you can't keep up with inflation even. And so people start quitting, and then due to network effects everyone else also starts quitting and the service dies. This is not in Twitter/Facebook's best interest and rest assured, they will not ever do it.
- wpietri 8y ago
  I don't think anybody's suggesting Twitter move to only having a paid offering, which I agree would be fatal. I also suspect the market of people who really would pay is not large enough for them to bother with, but it depends on what they put in the premium version. Dropping ads is easy to implement, but is a niche market. On the other hand, being able to create private spaces could be huge. And they do a decent business in access to data that nobody seems to mind.