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As 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 paymen
by manningthegoose 5y ago
As 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 agoFacebook makes maybe about 30USD a year from any given profile: > https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a21272151/facebook-data-money-value/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a212721... Being relatively optimistic about Twitter's size, and assuming they're just fantastic at it, Twitter might make what, half of that? So for 3$ a month you need about half of the userbase to be on board for data munging to no longer make sense as a business model. I do wonder how high that mark is though, every SAAS I've worked with has been pay-to-use from the start, so this is not a metric I'm familiar with.
- contravariant 5y agoWhat's weird here is that I would estimate it to be very difficult to find a person who generated over 30USD of revenue through ads for anyone other than the people selling the ads. But maybe my worldview is wrong here, I'm definitely not the right person to estimate Facebook's reach.
- webmaven 5y ago> So for 3$ a month you need about half of the userbase to be on board for data munging to no longer make sense as a business model. I think you might be assuming that advertising revenue is evenly distributed among users.
- otrahuevada 5y ago
- dralley 5y agoAs someone who used and appreciated Scroll (now Twitter Blue) for the same reasons, I'm pissed that they shut down the standalone service and locked it behind Twitter accounts. Canceled my subscription after that email went out. It's a shame. Kinda wish Mozilla had acquired it instead, although they don't have the leverage to promote it like Twitter does.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tootie 5y agoBut, it's not direct payment to publishers. It's indirect via twitter. You can pay publishers directly already by buying subscriptions. Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels from twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional journalism. This is mostly my hot take just based on the press release, but color me dubious. Local news is struggling nationwide and this doesn't feel like a solution. It feels like silicon valley looking to increase profits for their shareholders to the detriment of the world.
- kooshball 5y agodisagree with this point. I rather have more objective ads driven journalism than subscription "professional journalism". subscription are even more biased and create further silos for mis/information.
- manningthegoose 5y ago> Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels from twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional journalism. Isn't that what they're already doing? Except the payer is the advertiser instead of the platform itself via the subscriber.
- tootie 5y agoIf you've noticed a lot more paywalls going up it's because the era of clickbait is actually dying. Serious newsrooms have always hated it and shriveling ad revenue has finally tipped back towards subscriptions being the most viable path to profit. Content farms and their SEO game is far less valuable than it used to be.
- terr-dav 5y agoProfessional journalism has always had this problem to a degree; there's always been an advertiser or other funding source you don't want to piss off. Twitter just exacerbates this by rewarding the most sensational, attention-grabbing posts.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
- londons_explore 5y agoUnfortunately, I suspect $2.99 per month isn't sufficient to make these publishers whole with what they would have earned from the same users. Only a small fraction of twitter users will sign up, and the overlap with the kind of users likely to spend money on advertisers products will be big. I suspect this is true at nearly any price point. Even if it cost $50 per month, the tiny fraction of users who did sign up would be worth more than $50 in monthly ad revenue, since those are the kind of people who will subscribe to other high value services.
- smugglerFlynn 5y agoI think it depends on what kind of product Twitter Blue would become. Getting all the publishers in one app, and getting “news reading experience” designed right, may attract users who were not paying anything to publishers before. I just wonder if getting into channel business, instead of building more open of a platform where publishers control the prices themselves, was the right move for Twitter. Time will tell.
- giga_chad 5y agoWhy would I pay publishers?