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It'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, eve
by mikkergp 4y ago
It'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....