9 ms·
The price 100% was $20/mo as previously reported by journalists until Twitter dunked on it, and Elon's interpretation of the backlash is "the price is too high"
by minimaxir 4y ago
The price 100% was $20/mo as previously reported by journalists until Twitter dunked on it, and Elon's interpretation of the backlash is "the price is too high" and not "any price makes no sense at all."
This pricing clarification is most likely due to Stephen King's complaint: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587312517679878144
> We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?
- mikkergp 4y agoIt's such... odd behavior. For sure Stephen King who has a net worth of $500 million dollars does not mean "the price is too high". If Elon is successful, even I will read the business school case study on it, because it flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems and... well just about everything. The only way this works is if Elon's internal processes are way different from his public persona.
- oneoff786 4y agoHe’s saying the price is bullshit, not that he can’t afford it. To him, it offers basically no value. While him being on Twitter does offer Twitter value. He’s probably right, although it doesn’t generalize to most celebrities who do have a vested interest in paying to promote themselves.
- mikkergp 4y agoCorrect, which is odd that Elon responded to him, "How about 8?"
- smackeyacky 4y agoI might be wrong but I read that as a veiled insult. i.e. "Are you such a povvo that you can't afford $20?"
- mikkergp 4y agoIf it is an insult it seems very defensive, and feels like he gave Stephen King the upper hand.
- linuxftw 4y agoTwitter offers him value, or he wouldn't be on it. Personally, I think they could charge $50/mo and most blue checks would pay it. I think Elon has the right idea, you gotta dip their toes in the water, then jack up the price later.
- ssully 4y agoOf course it offers him value, but Stephen King being on the platform is more valuable to Twitter than it is for King.
- bombcar 4y agoI wonder if that's actually true - if it is, King should go make his own Twitter-like thing.
- ssully 4y agoI think King is better served by continuing to write and live his life.
- brookst 4y agoI don't think it works that way? When Oprah is seen dining at a restaurant, the restaurant gets more value from the PR than Oprah gets from the meal. That does not lead to the conclusion that she should go open a restaurant.
- cdash 4y agoIt really isn't. These people are stuck.
- mecha_ghidorah 4y ago> Twitter offers him value, or he wouldn't be on it I mean yes, but that value might be so low as to not be worth paying for. Not even for the monetary cost, but for the effort involved in setting up the payment (entering card details, etc) and then checking your bill is what you expect for the rest of time. That tiny amount of extra effort might make twitter not worth it alone for some people, even without the financial cost. And even that yes it does offer value I'd qualify in that the value might ultimately on reflection be considered to be ultimately a loss on net. For example a heroin addict gets value out of heroin, but on balance the value they get (a fleeting pleasure) often isn't worth the damage done to their lives, but you could say "well it obviously offers value or they wouldn't be taking it". Note that I'm not claiming twitter is addictive or damaging like heroin, just trying to point out that "must have value because they do it" isn't really a solid argument a lot of the time
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- conductr 4y agoYou don't think $8-20/month of book sales are generated by King's twitter presence?
- lamontcg 4y agoHe can still tweet without a blue checkmark and people will still know who he is.
- pie420 4y agoAnd what will he do about the hundreds of "RealStephenKing" "OfficialStephenKing" "StephenKingTwitter" accounts that will spring up and start scamming people and linking them to fake websites? How much will that cost Stephen King?
- matthewdgreen 4y agoAnd if Twitter’s user experience degrades to the point where King can’t Tweet effectively without a blue checkmark, then the platform is deeply screwed.
- fundad 4y agoHis publishers pay skilled publicists
- Waterluvian 4y agoOne of the things I admire about Elon (which is saying a lot...) is that for whatever reason, he's ready to bet the farm over and over. Whether he's some genius tactician or an impulsive moron, he just bought Twitter and is poised to drastically alter it. "flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems" indeed! Forgive me for this analogy but it's in the news: Imagine if NATO just said one day, "you know what, !@#$ it. We're done managing this complex system. Let's assume Russia doesn't have or won't use nukes and change our entire doctrine overnight. Get ready to deploy everything." There's a real possibility Elon buys Twitter for billions and runs it straight into the ground because he does not understand complex systems. Or maybe he gambles and is lucky. Or maybe he really does _get it_ and this is all in some absolutely bizarre way, calculated.
- dieortin 4y agoI really don’t want to live in a world in which so much depends on impulsive individuals. Your example sounds like a nightmare. That’s no way to make decisions.
- Waterluvian 4y agoYeah. It does sound like a nightmare. And I'm glad that, for now at least, those who get to make the decisions are not as impulsive as countless people are online about the matter. And when it comes to a $44 billon purchase, it sounds like a nightmare to affect it so impulsively. At least, unlike the nuclear fallout, it's not my money, I guess.
- dboreham 4y agoBut that's the world we all live in, and have for thousands of years.
- bombcar 4y agoIf you read the stories of many "successful" CEOs (I'm thinking Jobs here, but there are others) the decisions they'd make often would come out as quite impulsive. If you dig significantly you might find that they're not as impulsive as they seem, that the person was actually considering many aspects but playing their cards close until cut-off time.
- memish 4y agoFor King and many other blue checks it's a status symbol. A way for the Lord to distinguish himself from the peasants. King (aptly named) would be happier if it was a Veblen good that cost $100,000/mo, which he could afford, but the peasants can't. Elon is mocking King and his status symbol by saying "fine, how about $8?", which from the King's perspective, is worse than $20 because even more peasants will have it. The Blue Check is easier to get than a Netflix subscription.
- ssully 4y agoI don’t think you could have misread this interaction more than you already have.
- memish 4y agoI can see how you think that if you're not familiar with how blue checks are awarded and what they mean to the nobility class of Twitter.
- ssully 4y agoI am very aware of that. I think you’re not familiar with a King as a person or an author based on your comment. Finally, you thinking Musk was mocking is also wrong. He was using Kings viral tweet as a jump off point for the tweet this HN post is based off of.
- rodgerd 4y ago"The nobility class". What an absolute clownish take.
- fundad 4y agoI would love to pay to donate content to the site acquired by a guy to promote his other properties.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yamtaddle 4y agoSome blue checks need Twitter (mid-level youtubers, for instance). Some don't (Stephen King, for instance). In either case, Twitter needs the blue checks because they are, to a large degree, the reason non-blue-checks visit and engage with Twitter. I can see someone like Stephen King being annoyed at having to pay anything when his presence is probably helping Twitter quite a bit to begin with.
- lupire 4y agoStephen King needs a blue check because Twitter is terrible at deleting imposter accounts.
- yamtaddle 4y agoWhy does he care? Seems like that's worse for Twitter than it is for him. [EDIT] My point is, from King's perspective, this likely looks like "you're here and making $X over what you would if you just relied on your fans to repost all your stuff on here for you, we're making $Y more than we otherwise would because you're here, plus we've given you this blue-check thing to solve a problem we have, but now $Y isn't enough and we're going to make you pay money to keep participating in this program that exists to solve a problem for us." You can see how, unless $X is pretty big, someone who's already rich might say, "well fine, fuck you too" over such a thing.
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago> Twitter needs the blue checks because they are, to a large degree, the reason non-blue-checks visit and engage with Twitter. That may have been true at one time, but I'm not so sure it is any more.
- yamtaddle 4y agoI'm struggling to understand how that would not be true. Nobody follows a Twitter link to see what Joe Blow posted about anything. They follow them to see what someone they've heard of posted. People create accounts to follow blue checks, or to try to network with them. I get that there are several market segments for Twitter but ~all of them are pretty dependent on blue checks to drive eyeballs to the site and to keep people coming back, as far as I can tell. If people just want a group chat with other nobodies, Whatsapp exists. Thing is, the "blue checks" aren't all Stephen King level famous. If you're doing much notable at all, and using the platform, you've probably got a blue check. I do not, for the record—I'm not sure I even have an account?—but I see an awful lot of them on fairly niche but interesting & active personal accounts. Take them out and the best content goes back to being "I'm a Twitter Shitter!" kinds of stuff, like in the very early days—and the novelty for that is long gone. If these posters stay but let their blue checks lapse, we go back to having an impersonation problem, which is mostly a problem for Twitter, which they may want to solve. Perhaps for accounts that are likely to be impersonated they could introduce some kind of free verification system....
- memish 4y agoWhy does any price make no sense? "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." Though to truly resolve this, they need 0 ads, not 50% fewer.
- mikkergp 4y agoI think it's bimodal. Either Twitter is worth like 100$+ per month if you're a journalist/brand, or it's less than 0, and in Stephen King's case he's correct that Twitter should probably be paying him.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- geodel 4y agoYeah, I guess, he should disappear right now and negotiate a deal before coming back to Twitter.
- mikkergp 4y agoIt would be fun to try and mediate the discussions to try and convince which of the big ego'd celebrities/journalists/politicians are of value to twitter and twitter should pay, vs which are a sink and they should pay twitter. Hey monetezation plan! I would pay good money to watch that reality TV show.
- bigmattystyles 4y agoPlus it doesn't mean they won't also sell your data to third parties - there's more to your digital presence than just selling you ads.
- fluidcruft 4y agoI'm getting a chuckle thinking about Elon as ThePirateBay and Stephen King as the MPAA.
- croes 4y agoSince when does ThePirateBay demand a fee and the MPAA says it's too high?
- fluidcruft 4y agoExactly. That's why its so ridiculous.
- CodeWriter23 4y agoI don’t think the price is what bugs him so much as the newly-diminished elite status of the blue check.
- dwaite 4y agoYou seem to really misunderstand the purpose of the blue checkmark. It isn't to broadcast status, it is to help reduce impersonation and fraud. You'd think the Elon, having a notable and active Twitter account, would realize how bad it is even with those measures in place.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoMy gut instinct is that the right price for verification is something like $1000 as a one-time fee. Lots of people who are active Twitter users will find that fee useful at some point in their life (as a business marketing expense), and Twitter will likely extract a lot more from them by charging $1000 once rather than $8/month.
- ncallaway 4y agoI think it should just be 3x the cost of their verification process, and something that disappears and needs to be re-done if you edit your name/bio/handle.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- HWR_14 4y agoI cannot ever imagine spending $1000 for a blue check mark on Twitter.
- rchaud 4y agoInfluencers and hustlebros will pay that, celebrities won't. If the celebrities leave, Twitter dies.
- yamtaddle 4y agoExactly. Who's hurt more if it's hard to tell who the real celebrities are on Twitter? Whose press is worse when a celebrity is impersonated by some asshole on Twitter—Twitter's, or the celebrity's? Maybe initially the celebrity, but I'm gonna say it's Twitter in the medium-term. Who's gonna be hurt by "Twitter has an impersonation/fraud problem" headlines? Whatever else the blue checks are, they're also a solution to a problem for Twitter, and those blue-checks and their activity are a huge part of why everyone else engages with the platform. If they make people pay, they better hope the adoption rate is incredibly high among existing blue checks (who cares about the unknowns who pony up for it, in addition) or they're gonna be in for a bad time.
- UncleMeat 4y agoImagine making pricing decisions for a 40 billion dollar business on a fucking whim based on feedback from a famous author. I guess this is in character, given that Musk likes to price things with meme numbers already.
- memish 4y agoImagine thinking he made the decision based on that.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoPerhaps he actually did - I think in part he's just playing it straight as an outsider, openly talking about the emperor being naked. That is, a lot of the serious business is just bullshit LARP people do, and if Musk can openly mock it and make money on the meme value of it all? That's a well-earned entertainer salary.
- UncleMeat 4y agoHe's owned Twitter for a few days. He threw out $20 and then adjusted it down to $8, seemingly based on feedback. Did he already know that $8 was the appropriate amount? Was there already some internal analysis done that he is just piggy-backing on? It certainly seems like Musk is making big changes literally moments after arriving on scene.
- carbine 4y agoyes great point, without a doubt he put together $44B and never once thought about what he would do once he acquired it.
- dwaite 4y agoUntil a few weeks ago he didn't think he'd have to acquire it
- _djo_ 4y agoThe messages shared as part of the trial don't show a particularly rigorous or deep level of thought regarding what to do with Twitter once he acquired it. One would hope that still took place, but the haphazard approach so far doesn't provide much confidence that it did.
- jjfoooo6 4y agoElon completely miss the point in this exchange, which is that Twitter needs people like Stephen King far more than people like Stephen King need Twitter. Why should Stephen King care about how Twitter pays it's bills? The entire point of the blue check is that Twitter has an impersonation problem, what happens when some fraction of users find it worth paying $8 to impersonate a celebrity?
- ethanbond 4y agoAnd simultaneously some fraction of celebrities don’t find it worth it to pay $8 to prevent it. Muddies the water both directions.
- bcrosby95 4y ago"Elon, what made you decide on $8?" "I was going to charge $20, but then Stephen King told me it was too much."
- enumjorge 4y agoYou joke, but after reading some texts from Musk and his social circle [1], I find it plausible that that is how some of these business decisions get made. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-musk-texts-twitter-trial-jack-dorsey/671619/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/elon-...
- robryan 4y agoThis is probably fine though, it is the Elon way of doing business. Make fast decisions and try and whole heap of things. He then gets criticised for not delivering on the majority of them but still comes out ahead of orgs that take 6 months to make the decision in the first place.
- dwaite 4y ago> He then gets criticised for not delivering on the majority of them He gets criticized for promising them, even selling them like in the case of vehicle autonomy, when there is no realistic timeline for delivery. I mean, at least when Microsoft pitched vaporware on stage they didn't then take the money in advance.
- IshKebab 4y agoDoesn't seem like too bad a method to me. Apart from in situations where you have a ton of data (e.g. Amazon) most product prices are pulled out of someone's arse anyway.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fundad 4y agoOf course they are going to raise the price to $20 before long
- muttantt 4y agoNo, he just anchored everyone at $20 so that $8 comes across as affordable. Business 101.
- phpisthebest 4y agoif you only proof the price was $20 is because "journalists" reported it as so then I question your ability to critical think and judge facts because "journalists" report false things every day all day there is little to no evidence it was ever really $20, and even less evidence that Elon's mind was changed by Stephen King of all people... Who care what Stephen King thinks? More likely it was always going to be $8
- smcl 4y agoThis "5d chess" stuff is approaching the level of faith that qanon followers have - nothing is ever wrong, everything is always going according to The Plan, when it deviates it's because The Plan has changed and you weren't informed, Hillary was arrested and sent to gitmo but unfortunately she was cloned, etc, etc. Look, he's spitballing ideas and playing it a little fast and loose. It may pay off, it might not - it looks a little stupid to some of us on account of how much he's paid for the company, but it shouldn't really surprise anyone and he doesn't need anyone making excuses for him.
- phpisthebest 4y agoIt is not 5d chess, nor it is making excuses for him. It is a matter of critical thinking and evidence based research I do not count reporting based on anonymous sources as evidence of anything, Elon never said, and no official at Twitter ever said the price as going to be $20, so I have no evidence to believe outside of Rumor from sources that have been showed to be negatively biased on the subject and widely inaccurate on the subject, so why should I trust their $20 figure? I trust traditional news sources less than I do the government today, for which I would trust a Cartel bass more than the government.
- smcl 4y ago> Elon never said, and no official at Twitter ever said the price as going to be $20 Except that he did. In the tweet he made just before he said it would be $8. If you discard the tweets where he said it would be $20 and then $8 - then yes your statement holds. But we shouldn't, because those are the tweets where he said those things.
- awb 4y agoThis threat is interesting. I wonder what the minimum number is of top Twitter accounts that would have to leave for the platform to lose an unrecoverable amount of its daily impressions. For example, out of the top 100 twitter accounts (https://socialblade.com/twitter/top/100 https://socialblade.com/twitter/top/100), almost all are musicians, sports figures, politicians or news outlets. If the top 5 musicians and the top 5 sports figures got together and started posting content exclusively on a new platform, I wonder if it would be enough to cause a gravitational shift.
- jjfoooo5 4y agoThe critical thing for the platform is that if I want to find the Twitter account for {celebrity foo} I can do so with a high degree of confidence that it will be real. I think the loss of trust from consumers is the bigger risk, successful impersonations are relatively high profile and people don't like being tricked.