5 ms·
Raise the price and drop the features, makes sense to me. Next step, the MMO route: sell different-color flair for your account so everybody can tell how much
by klyrs 4y ago
Raise the price and drop the features, makes sense to me. Next step, the MMO route: sell different-color flair for your account so everybody can tell how much you spend per month on Twitter. Then, let people filter by tier: Twitter Blue can block Twitter Blue and no-check users; Twitter Red cannot be blocked except by Red and above... on up to Twitter Diamond who can't be blocked by anybody but other $100k/mo users. Sure, people will hate it, but will they pay?
- mikkergp 4y agoI support your cynicism here but it did make me curious, has “whale economics / micro transactions” been tried on a non gaming platform?
- klyrs 4y agoAirlines? Politicians? I think it was credit cards who started (or at least popularized) the Silver/Gold crap, but I'm unsure. And... I'm not sure that I'm being cynical here. I think I'm extrapolating on a pretty solid trend in economics. I'd like to think that the $100k value I tossed out is unrealistic, but I've been surprised before (looking at you, Diablo)
- mikkergp 4y agoFirst class twitter blue? For everyone else’s the first 140 characters are free, then .1 doge per character, unless you forget to add your characters at the beginning in which case you can add them in the edit for free, but have to collect them at baggage claim (the metaphor breaks down)
- fasthands9 4y agoI mean some would call it a game but Tinder/Match does this. They have subscriptions starting at $10 with some bonus features but there are also pre-set options for subscriptions/boosts that go up to $100 so I'm assuming those whales are using a lot. It's obviously not too dissimilar from Twitter. I bet some people get a very similar rush from a match as they do from a shared tweet. I imagine it's still mostly guys who buy the super futures but there's also a large class of OF models, aspiring influencers, etc. who use Tinder features because it is good value for their goals. I imagine people who use Twitter for clicks/attention would be in same spot.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoFast passes at amusement parks, airlines and online dating like other comments mention, concert tickets, hell tickets for anything. Court side seats are as much about being close to the action as being seen by others which is a similar vein of vanity as a blue check.
- oneoff786 4y agoNone of those are whale economics. Just premium offerings.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoIs the difference where whales make up the majority of revenue vs free or near free users?
- watwut 4y agoThe difference is that "whale economic" implies some users are paying huge huge amount of money. Like, over thousands of dollars in month in case of computer games. That sort of thing.
- carrotcarrot 4y agoAnd they're paying it through microtransactions. Most populations follow a power distribution like that, not just gaming. The most loyal customers spend way more than the tail. They don't spend it all at once usually, it's over many transactions. But they are still the group you target. This phenomenon is true in all lines of business not just gaming, and it's due to loyal customers who keep coming back (regardless whether it's a premium purchase or not), not single large ticket purchases... Sports have super fans that come to every game Airlines have business travelers Etc etc. https://www.liveabout.com/what-is-a-whale-2917364 https://www.liveabout.com/what-is-a-whale-2917364 ^ This term does not come from gaming.
- noizejoy 4y agoSuites in sports arenas (edit: also frequently used for large concerts) would seem to qualify as whale economics.
- carrotcarrot 4y agoGaming did not invent the whale.
- bogomipz 4y agoWhat is MMO here?
- _glass 4y agochariot race factions like in the byzantine empire that created many a riot were called blues and greens. would be funny to re-create. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-rocking-the-byzantine-empire-113325928/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/blue-versus-green-roc...
- giraffe_lady 4y agoWell we already have antagonistic political factions and a common vernacular shorthand referring to them by a pair of colors so idk how far we have to go to recreate anything really.
- buscoquadnary 4y agoYou act like that's a really bad thing but tbh requiring payment for verification seems to me one of the easiest ways to combat misinformation. Suddenly you have an actual source of money tied to an actual person that ties someone to their actual account. Meanwhile it can be assumed that anyone that doesn't verify is likely pushing false information. Seems like it is the easiest way possible to combat the misinformation not by becoming some sort of arbiter of truth but merely making it harder for people to push information out anonymously in the first place.
- klyrs 4y ago> You act like that's a really bad thing Did I? I thought I was spitballing for how twitter might be able to turn a profit. And, get this, without selling ads...
- gunapologist99 4y agoPoe's law strikes again.
- vidarh 4y agoPeople push misinformation under their real name all the time. Why anyone would expect this to change that, I don't know. Meanwhile, plenty of people will farm out verification of accounts for purposes where paying the verification fee for an illusion of authority will be worth it for a lot of uses.
- MallocVoidstar 4y ago> Meanwhile it can be assumed that anyone that doesn't verify is likely pushing false information. Or they're in a region where $20 is a significant portion of their monthly income. Of course, their government will be able to afford verification.
- xeromal 4y agoThat's a feature, not a bug when it comes to misinformation since loads of out comes from outside the US/West
- paxys 4y agoAccounts with blue check marks are some of the worst offenders when it comes to misinformation on Twitter, because that status gives additional legitimacy to whatever they say (compared to a random bot). Charging them $20 or whatever else isn't going to change anything.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoCharge $5 a month to common users to experience twitter with all the blue check people filtered out.
- edflsafoiewq 4y agoNow the Star-Belly Sneeches Had bellies with stars But the Plain-Belly Sneeches Had none upon thars...
- vkou 4y agoGiven how Twitter's new owner has been re-tweeting political conspiracies, I'm not sure 'reduce misinformation on Twitter' is anywhere on his list of priorities.
- _-david-_ 4y agoElon is a blue check so his point is still correct.
- choko 4y agoMisinformation like that the Biden laptop is a Russian conspiracy?
- vkou 4y agoWell, it's possible he may be inclined to reduce the amount of misinformation that harms his and his friends' political ambitions. (To be fair, though, it's not clear how Hunter Biden has anything to do with anything, and why anyone is still talking about him, because last I checked, unlike another royal family, Joe did not fill the cabinet with his relatives...)
- willio58 4y agoThis is somewhat similar to how Reddit currently works funnily enough
- carrotcarrot 4y agoOn reddit the users with he most power to abuse are the poorest (unpaid moderators). So it's really more the opposite.
- lamontcg 4y agoThere's lots of paid moderators, just not by reddit.
- jjeaff 4y agoThe 90s sitcom Frasier parodied this mentality to hilarious effect. Frasier and his brother Niles got memberships to an exclusive spa and then progressively kept discovering that there were more and more exclusive membership levels to which they promptly upgraded. Then they see one last non-descript door leading from the diamond room. Niles opens it to an astonishingly bright white light, they step into the light and their eyes adjust just as the door closes and locks behind them, and they realize they are in the back alley with the smelly garbage.
- vidarh 4y agoMore recently, in an episode of Modern Family, Jay keeps discovering there are more floors on the hotels he's staying in, where he thinks he's on the most exclusive top floor only to be denied some service or other which is reserved for the tier on the floor above.