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Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
- koolba 5y ago> In continuing our commitment to strengthen and support publishers and a free press, a portion of the revenue from Twitter Blue subscription fees goes directly to publishers within our network. I’m going to guess that I won’t find any NY Post stories about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop on this filtered platform. Honestly this just sounds like a door fee for an echo chamber.
- PascLeRasc 5y agoThis is actually something that seems pretty useful to me, and it's not outrageously priced. Good job.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoYou want me to pay to join the toxic cesspool?
- tillinghast 5y agoThey want you to pay to join the toxic cesspool.
- Bellend 5y agoI have been an elite troll since the original doom deathmatch days. I have a true skillset in the arts. Twitter Blue is going to require some serious passive trolling but I have just taken the challenge. If I get banned after paying then I'll be the one that is foaming at the mouth with rage!
- nvr219 5y agoYou can join for free and just pay to reduce the toxicity levels slightly.
- woodpanel 5y agoI'd find it funny to pay and be cancelled off the toxic cesspool
- fortyseven 5y agoYes, you're very cool.
- captn3m0 5y agoNo alt-text on screenshots, seriously twitter?
- unangst 5y agoI'm glad to support independent journalism while gaining ad-free access to quality content on a platform I frequent.
- acheron 5y agoI love engaging with brands!
- angulardragon03 5y agoIdeally you'd also get ad-free access to Twitter itself, which I would certainly consider paying for. Considering the annual per-user revenue is ~ 12USD [1], this seems like something that would be financially interesting to Twitter. [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/forecast-of-the-day%3A-twitters-revenue-per-international-user-2021-06-04 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/forecast-of-the-day%3A-twitt...
- johnnyo 5y agoThe average across all users is $12, but I suspect the average over people willing to pay for Blue is likely higher than that. It's can be a Catch-22 in some cases. The same people most willing to pay to opt-out are the ones most coveted by advertisers.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoSome how I don't think the people that want to pay to get rid of ads are the ones clicking on them. Anecdotally someone I am close to doesn't seem to mind ads and regularly buys products from them, I block ads and rarely ever buy products from them. I'd pay for not being served ads in the first place
- wbobeirne 5y agoIt's not necessarily about clicking the ad, it's also about brand awareness and the subconscious effect of having seen it. In the back of your head when you see the product the next time, you might think to yourself "I've seen this somewhere before... it's probably reputable." Or when you're in need of something, that brand's product might pop into your head sooner as something to assess.
- manningthegoose 5y agoAs someone who was an initial skeptic when this was first announced, I really appreciate what twitter is trying to do with Blue, especially around direct payments to publishers. Any step to get the internet off of the ad-based data-harvesting revenue model is ultimately better for almost all parties.
- ghawk1ns 5y agoWho said the data-harvesting would stop?
- manningthegoose 5y agoYou're right, it probably won't, at least not while it's still printing money for all the corporate entities involved. But it's my understanding that most of the data-harvesting tools in use today were originally created to enhance ad-targeting and drive up CPM. At the very least we can hope products like Blue might put a dent in this incentive structure.
- vosper 5y ago> At the very least we can hope products like Blue might put a dent in this incentive structure. I wonder if Twitter Blue customers will be omitted from the data stream that Twitter is selling to corporations and governments?
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoCable television was supposed to be a direct funded, ad free alternative to broadcast.
- dylan604 5y agoSomething about a road being paved with good intentions feels appropriate here.
- otrahuevada 5y ago
- echelon 5y agoCan they let us pay to remove all sponsored tweets? That's all I want. I'd gladly pay $10/mo. YouTube Red is the best product experience, and it's something I would pay to have elsewhere. I hate ads. I never buy products from ads. They just distract me. I'd pay $1000/yr for a completely ad-free Google. (No search result ads, no AMP, no "McDonalds" in Google Maps, ...)
- tills13 5y agoNever? Or never actively. i.e. do you unknowingly buy a product at a later date because you at one point saw an ad for it.
- ChefboyOG 5y agoThe "unknowingly" caveat makes that one a bit difficult to answer.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- williamscales 5y agoThe unknowing aspect is why I would also be willing to pay quite a bit to have no ads.
- tootie 5y agoAd-free twitter doesn't seem like good value to me, but a completely ad-free Google sounds like a winner. I'm slightly terrified to hear what my net value to advertisers is to defray that lost profit for goog.
- perihelions 5y agoThis seems eerily similar to what people feared could happen to the web in the absence of net neutrality, only with the role of the ISP this time replaced by a platform content referrer. A multi-tiered web: premium lanes for corporate sponsors with money changing hands. >"On iOS and desktop, Twitter Blue members will enjoy a fast-loading, ad-free reading experience when they visit many of their favorite news sites available in the US from Twitter, such as The Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, Reuters, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Insider and The Hollywood Reporter."
- black_puppydog 5y agoMaybe they just mean that when you don't load all the ads, things can actually load pretty fast? 0:-)
- perihelions 5y agoYes, they're providing different quality experiences, but not actually throttling bits like in the net neutrality scenario.
- bri3d 5y agoI don't think the fear with network neutrality was ever the idea of a content aggregator buying content on behalf of a subscriber, was it? My understanding of the argument with network neutrality was that the combination of the network provider as a natural monopoly and the network provider's ability to render content inaccessible would result in a fragmented Internet - you can only run so many wires to a house, and if Provider B cut off Content A, you might not get Content A anymore. I don't see how this is the same thing.
- perihelions 5y agoIt's qualitatively different, but there's some similarities in appearances. The end-user viewpoint, if this trend grows, is that the majority of the internet could present as a set of subscription packages -- the more you buy, the more of the internet you can access, and at higher service levels. Because of these new financial incentives, previously open, ad-supported websites will shift to becoming closed, subscription services: as the friction for end-users to subscribe to things goes down (because of federation*), this becomes more common. The open web goes dark. Conversely, since this is also an income source for the platforms/referrers, they'll want to boost referrals to partnering companies higher than non-partners -- tiered service. It's true this isn't the hard severity of an ISP throttling, or cutting off, non-partnering websites; but it's a soft analogue of it. *(This friction can be zero. You needn't take any positive action to subscribe to the Nth website; rather the platforms you subscribe to abstract that away for you, as they monitor all your clicks and visits, and handle the income-splitting transparently behind the curtains. Basically the Spotify model, for the open WWW).
- oxymoran 5y agoJust what the world needs, people Twittering harder.
- khc 5y agoThis came from an acquisition of scroll, which used to allow browsing partner websites without ads. Twitter Blue seems to require that we visit those sites from a tweet, which is a degraded functionality
- dang 5y agoPast related threads: Twitter confirms Twitter Blue - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27316115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27316115 - May 2021 (722 comments) Twitter's subscription service might cost $3 per month - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27168200 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27168200 - May 2021 (66 comments)
- FalconSensei 5y agoDoes it also makes my likes private, and stop showing me suggested profiles, other people's likes, etc?
- nvr219 5y agoNo you need to get Twitter Blue for Enterprise for that
- Taniwha 5y agoSome profit taking there - US$2.99 is not NZ$4.49 more like $4.20 - it's not like it costs extra money to NOT ship ads across the Pacific
- ProfessorLayton 5y agoI find it quite astonishing that Twitter is gating UX improvements like Undo/Edit and Reader view behind a paywall — both are problems of their own doing! - Undo/Edit is just basic functionality being sold for money. - Reader View wouldn't be necessary if twitter threads weren't hot garbage to begin with. I really don't mind paying for a good product, and overall I like twitter the most out of all the other big social sites. However, what I've been seeing for years now is that they refuse to build the best product possible for most of their users, and they would rather stagnate than improve it "for free".
- Andrex 5y ago- Doesn't remove ads on Twitter itself - Is not compatible with any news paywalls (they just strip ads out of already free-to-access articles) - Edit Tweet isn't Edit Tweet. It's an option to delay your tweets by 60 seconds. After that, you cannot Edit Tweet. "Slow Tweet" is more accurate but probably less marketable. Even if I were still using Twitter, and even though I support journalism when I can (paywalls for a few sites, etc.), I still wouldn't pay $3 for this. I think Twitter has a lot of work left to do on their business model. This move, IMO, is at least 5 years too late (if not 8-10). Considering Twitter has been unprofitable for most of its life, including in 2020[0], it's only now that they're thinking about alternatives to their ad network. 0. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/twitter-twtr-earnings-q1-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/twitter-twtr-earnings-q1-202...
- tehwebguy 5y agoI would pay this to kill the promoted tweets. I know it sounds super tin-foil hat but in the days or weeks leading up to Twitter's earnings reports the promoted tweets are absolutely out of control. This year I took screenshots of my feed where out of 14 tweets 10 were promoted!
- cstrat 5y agoYeah I hate the promoted tweets, I just try to block them all... hoping that one day I will have blocked them all.
- Andrex 5y agoThis idea would probably be a headache to implement, but has any service tried something like charging $1/$x for specific features? Feels like Twitter would be the prime candidate. Ad-free article access could be $1. """Editing""" tweets could be $1. Ad-free Twitter could be $4-5 (as that's what Twitter makes per US user per month via ads). Etc. IMO Patreon has already broken through the mental mode of "sign up for multiple sub-$5 things and have a single bill at the end of the month." Any big services out there doing a-la-carte premium features?
- notatoad 5y agostrava (exercise tracking app) was doing it for a while, they had safety/training/metrics premium bundles each centered around a single standout feature at somewhere between $1 and $2 each, but have since gone back to a single premium tier.
- LordAtlas 5y agoNot bad, Twitter product design team. They managed to take essential UX improvements and stick it behind a paid subscription.
- missinfo 5y agoCheeky. Charging for a send tweet delay, so you have time to "undo" it.
- somehnacct3757 5y agoI first learned this technique from product managers in F2P games. If players are asking for a QoL improvement, make it a consumable item and sell it.
- paulpauper 5y agoThe Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, Reuters, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Insider and The Hollywood Reporter. Seems like a good way to push a ideological/political agenda, too.
- ushakov 5y agotheir TA primarily uses Twitter
- anshumankmr 5y agoThe amount of propagandists on Twitter is mindblowing. They removed Trump but they have people like Chen Weihua, some actual Taliban recruiting accounts, the BJP IT Cell, tankies (who support DPRK/CPC or unironically think communism is better)
- wpietri 5y agoI just signed up not because I'm particularly interested in the Twitter Blue features, but because I believe in paying for things I use. I also want Twitter (and other companies) to start reducing their dependency on advertising dollars, which come with a lot of perverse incentives. If people are looking for in on the web client, it's in the left menu under "More".l
- partiallypro 5y ago>Twitter (and other companies) to start reducing their dependency on advertising dollars Yeah, except Twitter Blue does do that at all. They are just double dipping. You still get just as many ads as before.
- wpietri 5y agoNo, that's not quite correct. If we measure dependency as the proportion of income coming from something, then this still reduces dependency, albeit not as much as I'd like. More importantly, this is going to introduce a whole new kind of thinking to people who work on the consumer side of Twitter. Previously, impact on ad revenue was the only financial metric they'd have to think about. That makes many optimization questions appear simple. Introducing other kinds of revenue complicates the calculus, allowing better decisions to emerge.
- barnabee 5y agoI pay for YouTube Premium and spend a lot more time on Twitter. I’d pay the same for ad free Twitter. As soon as Twitter Blue comes to the UK I’d pay for it even without it being totally ad free (while complaining about that). Between Tweetbot and comprehensive ad blocking I never see ads anyway and I’m happy to pay for something I get that much value from.
- thrower123 5y agoNeat, you can pay for the experience you'd get for free with uBlock.
- gok 5y agoBefore anyone else wastes their money on this: it doesn't make Twitter ad-free.
- dillondoyle 5y agoIs the WaPo subscription full or is it more like Apple News where you only get access to a couple headline articles and have to pay even more beyond news+ for full access? just looked it shows me $5.99 a month for wapo add on. If so might be worth it for me even though I don't use twitter. The rest I think are mostly available on news+ Full bloomberg on apple news is $34.99 a month, though they do have more free articles than WaPo it seems and at least I can understand the value and niche of financial news not really worth reading about unless you're in finance. I don't think NyTimes is even an option anymore. They make enough profit on their walled garden seems they won't ever participate in this stuff again. The Apple News subscription I already pay for seems to be more for magazines. It used to have everything.
- shp0ngle 5y agoYes, news backed off from Apple News because they want to track users more than Apple News allows, basically. Plus they want to be more in control what gets shown.
- jdeibele 5y agoIf you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can get a full WaPo subscription for $3.99/month. It works great for me on my Mac, less so on my iPad when following links in Twitter. The Twitter browser view doesn't seem able to handle logging into Amazon, then reporting success to WaPo so I can read the article. I think it works OK if I remember to open the link in Safari.
- bob229 5y agoTwitter is an evil sewer. Delete your account now
- foxhop 5y agoTwitters algo is broken and it's idea is old.
- analogdreams 5y agounderwhelming. now if they would roll out a feature that ensures i never reread a tweet and shows me a true 'done'/'inbox zero' after my feed has been consumed they might have something.
- no_wizard 5y agoI'm very shocked that paying for twitter like this does not automatically get you verified. Is this not just listed as a feature? To be honest, I would pay 4.99 a month to get that blue check mark
- thorgutierrez 5y agoI'd love to pay handsomely to remove ads from my Twitter feed, but Twitter Blue only remove ads from _other_ websites? please Twitter folks if you see this :pray:
- fideloper 5y agoI really want to like Twitter Blue. I'm having a hard time deciding if I'm cynical, or if it's Twitter product people being cynical: The changes we are paying for are client-side features only! There's no change to twitter. For example, you can't edit a tweet, you can only delay sending the tweet for a few seconds while you stare at the tweet!
- uncomputation 5y agoAnyone have a look at what Reader View looks like? That was the only screenshot they didn’t post and yet the only one I care about.
- mikeevans 5y agoWhich platform? Here's one on iOS: https://twitter.com/NoelDavila/status/1458134578544185346 https://twitter.com/NoelDavila/status/1458134578544185346 Disclaimer: Not associated with the tweet above, but I was the TL for Reader :)
- 0xdeadb00f 5y agoI havent heard of Blue... It looks almosy like an RSS reader in some of the screenshots.
- diebeforei485 5y agoI'm not sure who this is for. The features don't interest me much, and I use Twitter quite a bit (though mostly not to tweet things myself).
- partiallypro 5y agoI signed up for it, and immediately cancelled. The ability to undo tweets is a bit of an annoyance after a while, and none of the features really justify the $3/mo price tag for me. If they charged me $3/mo to make my feed ad free, that would have been worth it. This...not so much.
- cercatrova 5y agoYou can just use uBlock Origin and use mobile Twitter as a pinned app to block ads. That works for me.
- groby_b 5y ago... and still no edit feature. This might seem like a tweet soundbite,but it goes to the root of the problem - twitter develops its features in a vacuum and actively refuses to listen to its users. I'd also argue that they picked a horrible price point - it's too expensive for most twitter users, and too cheap for the ones willing to pay. The demographic of people willing to pay for twitter is not extremely price sensitive, and going for a lower price point will only insignificantly expand it. Going for a higher price point with more value add (remove "promoted tweets" garbage) would be significantly more appealing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]