8 ms·

The good: Twitter should not be editorally curating people through verification, making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good ch

The good: Twitter should not be editorally curating people through verification, making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change, as long as it's not necessary for participation. Brands, celebrities, those in the public eye could benefit from this. Needs to be implemented with care and ideally with a branding change so as not to confuse users as the semantics change. The bad: $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all. See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming services have ads, but for most online content - video, journalism, etc, if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just nickle-and-diming users to give them a bunch of ads, particularly when the marginal cost for Twitter Blue is essentially zero). The ugly: Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation. At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter, at worst this is ripe for abuse.

morsch 4y ago
Virtually all streaming services still have ads at the paid tier: sponsored content in YouTube videos, product placement everywhere, athletes that are living billboards.
- type-r 4y ago
  SponsorBlock is key for YouTube
  - boogies 4y ago
    Much as Nitter / LibRedirect are essential for Twitter
ribosometronome 4y ago
>making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change [and continued desire to pay $8 a month]
michaelmior 4y ago
> See: every streaming service. Plenty of streaming services have ad-supported versions that are in this price range (e.g. Hulu, HBO Max). I don't disagree that having ads at all on Twitter Blue is bad, but I'm not sure the comparison with streaming services works.
- bigmattystyles 4y ago
  But every streaming service* has to pay for content, either license or create - on Twitter, the users generate the content. In my mind the costs to acquire content are much lower for twitter. They have other technological challenges, some similar, some dissimilar to video streamers, but content wise, Twitter doesn't pay for anything. * Youtube premium has a mix of user content and licenced content but doesn't have ads (other than live reads which don't count here)
- danpalmer 4y ago
  Fair enough. Neither are available in the UK. My thinking was based on YouTube Premium, Apple TV, Netflix (currently), 4oD, Disney+, etc.
  - watwut 4y ago
    I dont think twitter is anywhere near Netflix or even youtube premium in terms of what it provides. And I am saying it as someone who do actually uses twitter (unlike half of HN who claims to never use it).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
MallocVoidstar 4y ago
Will they actually be doing ID verification? Binance is one of the investors, so it might just be "if you can pay $8 you can be whoever you want, at least for a while".
- cinntaile 4y ago
  I don't get the link. Why would Binance be in favour of impersonating others for $8/month?
  - MallocVoidstar 4y ago
    Crypto people are generally not in favor of providing your government ID for things. "Pay $8 in crypto and also give us your identification documents" will not be popular.
    - amadeuspagel 4y ago
      You do in fact need to prove your identity if you want to trade on binance. (KYC requirement.) So I don't see why they would have a problem with making people prove their identity for a bluecheck.
- matwood 4y ago
  Last I checked, Binance does KYC.
  - biscottigelato 4y ago
    Crypto to crypto Binance has no KYC option up to $10k per day or so.
mattr47 4y ago
Many streaming services have ads in their lowest tier now. Paramount is the first I can think of.
taude 4y ago
Netflix has ad-tier coming for $7/month. HBO Max costs like $16/month. I get ads for Hulu, but that costs only $.99/month on Black Friday deal. I'm paying $80/year for Disney, and I think Apple is still charging only $5/month. So....I don't know, $8 doesn't feel that ridiculously out of line priced. [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/netflix-ad-supported-tier-price-release-date-announced https://www.ign.com/articles/netflix-ad-supported-tier-price...
- bydo 4y ago
  Those companies all spend money to create and/or license content. Twitter seems to want users to pay $8/mo and continue to see ads for the privilege of creating the content that brings users to Twitter?
  - tinyhouse 4y ago
    That's not it. Twitter is used for marketing by many (esp businesses but also individuals) so they will pay to better market themselves. The same way that LinkedIn charges money even thought they don't create anything besides the platform.
  - tinus_hn 4y ago
    Apparently Twitter needs 20000 employees to let those users create the content; they need to get paid!
  - lupire 4y ago
    Brands don't post to be nice. They are posting ads for their business.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    Yes? It's actually better for Twitter because they can get pocket most of the money. Companies aren't voluntarily charging barely enough to cover costs - they're being forced to do it by competition. Normally, they'll charge you as much as they can get away with. It would be news if Twitter, or anyone else for that matter, decided to voluntarily charge less for the sake of fairness to the users.
xemdetia 4y ago
I'd also say that $8 a month is a great price to astroturf for a month. Also why is the idea of Twitter monthly even sensible? Who plans their Twitter identity as a power user month to month? Why is it not just $100 a year?
- dboreham 4y ago
  It probably is.
gonehome 4y ago
I was really hoping for no ads! Huge bummer on that front.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  Just use an unofficial Twitter client! I do wonder whether their days are numbered though. I can see it going one of two ways – full ban of all third party clients, or a far more open API. Musk is so unpredictable, both would appear to fit his viewpoints on these things.
  - gonehome 4y ago
    I've tried multiple times and they're just bad imo.
fluidcruft 4y ago
> Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation I'd assume the $8 high-rollers can still retweet and amplify the poors.
costcofries 4y ago
"biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation" I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out of being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive enough value to pay $8. The difference however is that now your contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even engage more now. If you aren't that user, then maybe you don't derive enough value from conversation because you are mostly a consumption user. So you continue as you do today, consuming and occasionally replying to tweets but hardly ever having your response seen or acknowledged.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  > I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out of being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive enough value to pay $8. The difference however is that now your contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even engage more now. I disagree. Diverse input results in better conversations – less of an echo chamber, less black and white thinking, more visibility for other viewpoints, more empathy. There is diversity among people who want to spend $8/mo on Twitter, but there is far more by definition among all Twitter users. Plus you're likely to discriminate against already marginalised groups in most regions, as marginalised groups (whatever the categorisation) tend to have less disposable income.
  - christkv 4y ago
    If anything Twitter has shown that the current model is just mob rule
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > Diverse input results in better conversations But how many different people are necessary to give the diversity of thought on a particular topic? I bet it is not many, certainly fewer than 100, maybe 50, or on some topics even just 20.
DeRock 4y ago
> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all. Adverse selection. The people willing to pay to remove ads are probably your most profitable users to show ads to.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  That's a good point, but while I don't have any data, I've heard anecdotally that for services that implement paid user tiers with no advertising, they always make much more from paid users than ads, on the order of 5-10x. While there is a distribution on how much ads users are worth, it's not enough to overcome that difference _at scale_. There are a small number of users who are worth $$$$, but they're a small amount of absolute revenue because there are so few.
  - vasco 4y ago
    You're making the same point that you're replying to. The juiciest users pay, so the non-paying users are the penny pinchers that convert way less on ads, so the ad revenue is obviously very low compared to the revenue from the paid users. Similar to how people self selected into iOS and android and to this day its way more effective to advertise to less price sensitive iOS users than Android users with cheap phones, though the effect was even larger in the early days.
    - andirk 4y ago
      Similar to how the CTR of ads on msn.com or live.com was once way higher than everywhere else because anyone who was fooled in to using those default start pages was probably more easily fooled in all aspects.
- ProfessorLayton 4y ago
  The people willing to pay, the heavy users, are also the people most engaged and posting content on the platform. Content that twitter needs for less heavy users to consume, bringing in eyeballs for advertisers. Continuing to show ads to paying content creators is double-dipping.
slg 4y ago
>making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change Where does he say there will be any verification around ID? Twitter needs to make sure that I can't just name my account @WhiteHouseCommunications and pay $8 to get a blue checkmark. The whole point of the blue checkmark was to personally review those accounts to make sure they are who they say they are. Is Twitter still going to put in this manual effort for a greater base of verified users especially after they seemingly plan to downsize staff?
- Fomite 4y ago
  This. The conflating of an authentically derived status ("This person is real") with a paid form of status both defeats the purpose of the first, and is somewhat telling about a particular mindset.
  - parineum 4y ago
    I don't think that's the goal. I think the goal is to reasonably be able to know a checkmark isn't a bot.
- empressplay 4y ago
  They don't need to, your 'full' name is just locked to whatever's on your payment method. Problem solved.
  - adrr 4y ago
    That’s cool. I can set the bill name and address of my visa gift cards for online purchases. Sure hope they do this for $8/m.
  - slg 4y ago
    That isn't how verification currently works and I can't imagine that is how Twitter would want it to work in the future. People change their display name all the time on Twitter and can even change their username. Plus Facebook has already shown that real name policies are hard and can cause user pushback and that was with a community that already is more lined up with our real life identities. Pseudonymous accounts are a huge part of Twitter.
cmelbye 4y ago
> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. I don't think so. Twitter's ARPU from advertising in Q2 2022 was around $4.50. ARPU from advertising in the US was more than $14. Users likely to subscribe at $8/month (power users in western countries) are more valuable than average for advertising. No ads for $8/month would probably be a very bad idea.
- codemac 4y ago
  Exactly, thank you. I was going to say - $8/mo per US user would be a failing ad business.
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    YouTube is 13€ for ad-free and they're actually hosting videos (High bandwidth) AND share over 50% of this with the content creators. $8 is a lot - relatively speaking.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - jonny_eh 4y ago
      and includes YouTube Music.
- mosdl 4y ago
  half the ads, not no ads.
- Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
  Twitter Q2 average daily monetizable users: 237.8 million Q2 revenue: $1.18 billion Q2 revenue per monetizable user: $4.96 Revenue per user if they're paying $8 a month is $24 per quarter (there's 3 months in a quarter!) That's definitely more than the profitability of the average user. If I got the numbers wrong then please show me how.
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Ajedi32 4y ago
Agree with most of this, but: > Paying $8 [...] At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter Really? That seems completely contrary to my experience. In every online community I've seen, a higher barrier to entry has always been positively correlated with the quality of the conversation. Not saying there won't be downsides to this, but I very much doubt a lower quality of conversation will be one of them.
- ypeterholmes 4y ago
- drawfloat 4y ago
  But it's not a higher barrier to entry – you can read and respond freely. It's a higher barrier to having a good experience, which I can't think of many successful examples of to be honest.
  - concinds 4y ago
    > respond freely You can already filter out non-verified mentions and replies. Presumably that's not going away, and will be used by far more people after this change. It very much is a barrier to entry.
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      But the verified mention is no longer a verified mention. It’s a paid mention. And the people most likely to pay to ensure that their responses are seen broadly are narcissists and people who want to sell you stuff like their latest get rich quick scheme, newsletter Subscription, etc. Actual verified users will dwindle in comparisons and the value of filtering out non “verified” responses will plummet.
    - joegahona 4y ago
      > You can already filter out non-verified mentions and replies. How?
perrygeo 4y ago
> See: every streaming service The key difference is that streaming services purchase valuable content and resell it. There is obvious demand and the market clearly exists. Twitter provides little in the way of mass entertainment, unless you enjoy watching people argue with trolls in an algorithmically-created drama. The content is not created by twitter. There is no obvious market demand; the vast majority of people on the planet wouldn't bother using twitter even if it was free.
- nomel 4y ago
  > the vast majority of people on the planet wouldn't bother using twitter even if it was free. "wouldn't bother" should be "don't bother". For the world, around 290 million [1], with an internet population of around 4 billion [2], that's around 7%. Things are a bit better for the us, with 41.5 million active users [1], assuming they're all over 18 (209 million), that's about 20% of US population. 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/10/25/twitter-hemorrhaging-its-most-active-users-report-says/?sh=494433726e5e https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/10/25/twit... 2. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=number+of+adults+with+internet+worldwide&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=number+...
  - perrygeo 4y ago
    > "wouldn't bother" should be "don't bother" excellent point - I should use the active present tense. That is: "most people alive today don't bother with twitter, despite the fact that it's free." Is it "free" in other meanings of the word - free of charge, free speech, free expression, freedom of religion, freedom to lie, freedom to intimidate? Time will tell.
legitster 4y ago
> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. Than an average user. But if you are a power user, you have just sent a valuable marketing signal. > Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards those with means Strong disagree. Twitter currently only exists as a bullhorn for already famous people, or a few lucky early adopters.
- lupire 4y ago
  I mean, being too online, at home, in sweats, doesn't make me a big spender.
- watwut 4y ago
  I dont think early adopters mattered for years already.
- Fomite 4y ago
  "Strong disagree. Twitter currently only exists as a bullhorn for already famous people, or a few lucky early adopters." Not if you curate it at all. My two Twitter accounts are dominated by...my fellow academics on one of them, and niche hobbyists on the other.
lupire 4y ago
"Half" ads is extremely common. Disney and Netflix are doing it, and even if you don't have platform ads, the content embeds ads.
- deltree7 4y ago
  Yeah, there were ads in Newspapers and Magazines too that you paid money. There is an entire generation of entitled people who grew up in 0% VC-funded businesses who are accustomed to getting great products for free who have to adjust to the reality of cost of capital.
  - SahAssar 4y ago
    > Yeah, there were ads in Newspapers and Magazines too that you paid money. The publishers of those paid for the content, paid for editing, paid for the physical medium, paid for physical distribution. Twitter is distributing short pieces of text, some images and video on a medium that is famously cheaper than everything that came before it, while not paying anything to the authors and has no editors.
celestialcheese 4y ago
> See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming services have ads, but for most online content - video, journalism, etc, if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just nickle-and-diming users to give them a bunch of ads, particularly when the marginal cost for Twitter Blue is essentially zero). Even after your edit, this isn't true. NYTimes includes ads in their paid subscription products. AFAIK, most premium news and editorial still includes ads. It's not nearly as many or as intrusive as the free pubs like NYPost, but there's still ads even though I'm paying $20/mo for NYTimes
seydor 4y ago
There's nothing good. When everyone can buy a checkmark, it becomes nothing. The next step is "only allow replies from blue checkmarks" both are bad ideas, and solely because of musk's obsession with bots. Without a mob to prop up people with retweets, twitter will be useless. You cant have the good parts without the ugly parts
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  Everyone can’t buy a checkmark. Bots will be almost impossible to scale at $8/mo, which means if you deprioritize or hide content from bots without the check, Twitter has a realistic shot at eliminating the bot problem.
  - seydor 4y ago
    checkmarks mean prestige, exclusivity, and validation. public figures and journalists love prestige, they live for it. twitter just removed one thing that made it attractive to them. being able to buy it means it s useless for anything other than removing spam that s a very odd way to remove spam . and personally i dont see twitter bots because i dont go searching for them. Musk is completely obsessed with the wrong problem
    - carbine 4y ago
      checkmarks ALSO mean you are who you say you are. making them a feature of Twitter Blue (note: one feature of Twitter Blue) eliminates any status that might have been conferred in the past, yes, but it also goes a long way to sorting legitimate from fake users.
      - dwaite 4y ago
        They are who you say you are - assuming you can do proper verification of individual identity and affiliation, authorization to represent a business or brand, etc. for some portion of that first $8 payment.
  - tptacek 4y ago
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
I wonder what would happen if they introduced some kind of scale (boosting a post? sponsored tweets?) $0 - you barely get heard $8 - you kind of get heard $88 - you really get heard $888 - everybody thinks the exact same thing as you do and you can manipulate portions of the population (lol)
- jjfoooo5 4y ago
  There's no meaningful difference between what you are describing and advertising.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    Advertising is a great business to be in apparently, maybe he's diversifying from corporate clients.
AYBABTME 4y ago
FT.com serves ads to paying customers.
andirk 4y ago
My guess is that the $8/mo user pool is a target demo for advertisers who like people who like subscriptions. And there can be a premium charge for targeting the $8 burger
ChrisRR 4y ago
I already think twitter is the worst platform for conversation, the UI is only designed for shouting into the void Every time I see a post it's just followed up by 100 meme gifs, not discussion.

morsch 4y ago

Virtually all streaming services still have ads at the paid tier: sponsored content in YouTube videos, product placement everywhere, athletes that are living billboards.

type-r 4y ago
SponsorBlock is key for YouTube
- boogies 4y ago
  Much as Nitter / LibRedirect are essential for Twitter

ribosometronome 4y ago

>making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change [and continued desire to pay $8 a month]

michaelmior 4y ago

> See: every streaming service. Plenty of streaming services have ad-supported versions that are in this price range (e.g. Hulu, HBO Max). I don't disagree that having ads at all on Twitter Blue is bad, but I'm not sure the comparison with streaming services works.

bigmattystyles 4y ago
But every streaming service* has to pay for content, either license or create - on Twitter, the users generate the content. In my mind the costs to acquire content are much lower for twitter. They have other technological challenges, some similar, some dissimilar to video streamers, but content wise, Twitter doesn't pay for anything. * Youtube premium has a mix of user content and licenced content but doesn't have ads (other than live reads which don't count here)
danpalmer 4y ago
Fair enough. Neither are available in the UK. My thinking was based on YouTube Premium, Apple TV, Netflix (currently), 4oD, Disney+, etc.
- watwut 4y ago
  I dont think twitter is anywhere near Netflix or even youtube premium in terms of what it provides. And I am saying it as someone who do actually uses twitter (unlike half of HN who claims to never use it).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

MallocVoidstar 4y ago

Will they actually be doing ID verification? Binance is one of the investors, so it might just be "if you can pay $8 you can be whoever you want, at least for a while".

cinntaile 4y ago
I don't get the link. Why would Binance be in favour of impersonating others for $8/month?
- MallocVoidstar 4y ago
  Crypto people are generally not in favor of providing your government ID for things. "Pay $8 in crypto and also give us your identification documents" will not be popular.
  - amadeuspagel 4y ago
    You do in fact need to prove your identity if you want to trade on binance. (KYC requirement.) So I don't see why they would have a problem with making people prove their identity for a bluecheck.
matwood 4y ago
Last I checked, Binance does KYC.
- biscottigelato 4y ago
  Crypto to crypto Binance has no KYC option up to $10k per day or so.

mattr47 4y ago

Many streaming services have ads in their lowest tier now. Paramount is the first I can think of.

taude 4y ago

Netflix has ad-tier coming for $7/month. HBO Max costs like $16/month. I get ads for Hulu, but that costs only $.99/month on Black Friday deal. I'm paying $80/year for Disney, and I think Apple is still charging only $5/month. So....I don't know, $8 doesn't feel that ridiculously out of line priced. [1] https://www.ign.com/articles/netflix-ad-supported-tier-price-release-date-announced https://www.ign.com/articles/netflix-ad-supported-tier-price...

bydo 4y ago
Those companies all spend money to create and/or license content. Twitter seems to want users to pay $8/mo and continue to see ads for the privilege of creating the content that brings users to Twitter?
- tinyhouse 4y ago
  That's not it. Twitter is used for marketing by many (esp businesses but also individuals) so they will pay to better market themselves. The same way that LinkedIn charges money even thought they don't create anything besides the platform.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  Apparently Twitter needs 20000 employees to let those users create the content; they need to get paid!
- lupire 4y ago
  Brands don't post to be nice. They are posting ads for their business.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  Yes? It's actually better for Twitter because they can get pocket most of the money. Companies aren't voluntarily charging barely enough to cover costs - they're being forced to do it by competition. Normally, they'll charge you as much as they can get away with. It would be news if Twitter, or anyone else for that matter, decided to voluntarily charge less for the sake of fairness to the users.

xemdetia 4y ago

I'd also say that $8 a month is a great price to astroturf for a month. Also why is the idea of Twitter monthly even sensible? Who plans their Twitter identity as a power user month to month? Why is it not just $100 a year?

dboreham 4y ago
It probably is.

gonehome 4y ago

I was really hoping for no ads! Huge bummer on that front.

danpalmer 4y ago
Just use an unofficial Twitter client! I do wonder whether their days are numbered though. I can see it going one of two ways – full ban of all third party clients, or a far more open API. Musk is so unpredictable, both would appear to fit his viewpoints on these things.
- gonehome 4y ago
  I've tried multiple times and they're just bad imo.

fluidcruft 4y ago

> Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation I'd assume the $8 high-rollers can still retweet and amplify the poors.

costcofries 4y ago

"biases towards those with means rather than those contributing to the conversation" I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out of being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive enough value to pay $8. The difference however is that now your contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even engage more now. If you aren't that user, then maybe you don't derive enough value from conversation because you are mostly a consumption user. So you continue as you do today, consuming and occasionally replying to tweets but hardly ever having your response seen or acknowledged.

danpalmer 4y ago
> I'm not sure this is a bad thing. If you are a user who actively contributes to the conversation and get's value out of being in that conversation, then it's likely you derive enough value to pay $8. The difference however is that now your contribution is more likely to be seen. You might even engage more now. I disagree. Diverse input results in better conversations – less of an echo chamber, less black and white thinking, more visibility for other viewpoints, more empathy. There is diversity among people who want to spend $8/mo on Twitter, but there is far more by definition among all Twitter users. Plus you're likely to discriminate against already marginalised groups in most regions, as marginalised groups (whatever the categorisation) tend to have less disposable income.
- christkv 4y ago
  If anything Twitter has shown that the current model is just mob rule
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > Diverse input results in better conversations But how many different people are necessary to give the diversity of thought on a particular topic? I bet it is not many, certainly fewer than 100, maybe 50, or on some topics even just 20.

DeRock 4y ago

> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. There's no excuse for "half the ads", it should be none at all. Adverse selection. The people willing to pay to remove ads are probably your most profitable users to show ads to.

danpalmer 4y ago
That's a good point, but while I don't have any data, I've heard anecdotally that for services that implement paid user tiers with no advertising, they always make much more from paid users than ads, on the order of 5-10x. While there is a distribution on how much ads users are worth, it's not enough to overcome that difference _at scale_. There are a small number of users who are worth $$$$, but they're a small amount of absolute revenue because there are so few.
- vasco 4y ago
  You're making the same point that you're replying to. The juiciest users pay, so the non-paying users are the penny pinchers that convert way less on ads, so the ad revenue is obviously very low compared to the revenue from the paid users. Similar to how people self selected into iOS and android and to this day its way more effective to advertise to less price sensitive iOS users than Android users with cheap phones, though the effect was even larger in the early days.
  - andirk 4y ago
    Similar to how the CTR of ads on msn.com or live.com was once way higher than everywhere else because anyone who was fooled in to using those default start pages was probably more easily fooled in all aspects.
ProfessorLayton 4y ago
The people willing to pay, the heavy users, are also the people most engaged and posting content on the platform. Content that twitter needs for less heavy users to consume, bringing in eyeballs for advertisers. Continuing to show ads to paying content creators is double-dipping.

slg 4y ago

>making verification only about ID and being a real person is a broadly good change Where does he say there will be any verification around ID? Twitter needs to make sure that I can't just name my account @WhiteHouseCommunications and pay $8 to get a blue checkmark. The whole point of the blue checkmark was to personally review those accounts to make sure they are who they say they are. Is Twitter still going to put in this manual effort for a greater base of verified users especially after they seemingly plan to downsize staff?

Fomite 4y ago
This. The conflating of an authentically derived status ("This person is real") with a paid form of status both defeats the purpose of the first, and is somewhat telling about a particular mindset.
- parineum 4y ago
  I don't think that's the goal. I think the goal is to reasonably be able to know a checkmark isn't a bot.
empressplay 4y ago
They don't need to, your 'full' name is just locked to whatever's on your payment method. Problem solved.
- adrr 4y ago
  That’s cool. I can set the bill name and address of my visa gift cards for online purchases. Sure hope they do this for $8/m.
- slg 4y ago
  That isn't how verification currently works and I can't imagine that is how Twitter would want it to work in the future. People change their display name all the time on Twitter and can even change their username. Plus Facebook has already shown that real name policies are hard and can cause user pushback and that was with a community that already is more lined up with our real life identities. Pseudonymous accounts are a huge part of Twitter.

cmelbye 4y ago

> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. I don't think so. Twitter's ARPU from advertising in Q2 2022 was around $4.50. ARPU from advertising in the US was more than $14. Users likely to subscribe at $8/month (power users in western countries) are more valuable than average for advertising. No ads for $8/month would probably be a very bad idea.

codemac 4y ago
Exactly, thank you. I was going to say - $8/mo per US user would be a failing ad business.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  YouTube is 13€ for ad-free and they're actually hosting videos (High bandwidth) AND share over 50% of this with the content creators. $8 is a lot - relatively speaking.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    and includes YouTube Music.
mosdl 4y ago
half the ads, not no ads.
Philip-J-Fry 4y ago
Twitter Q2 average daily monetizable users: 237.8 million Q2 revenue: $1.18 billion Q2 revenue per monetizable user: $4.96 Revenue per user if they're paying $8 a month is $24 per quarter (there's 3 months in a quarter!) That's definitely more than the profitability of the average user. If I got the numbers wrong then please show me how.
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Ajedi32 4y ago

Agree with most of this, but: > Paying $8 [...] At best this will reduce conversation quality on Twitter Really? That seems completely contrary to my experience. In every online community I've seen, a higher barrier to entry has always been positively correlated with the quality of the conversation. Not saying there won't be downsides to this, but I very much doubt a lower quality of conversation will be one of them.

ypeterholmes 4y ago
drawfloat 4y ago
But it's not a higher barrier to entry – you can read and respond freely. It's a higher barrier to having a good experience, which I can't think of many successful examples of to be honest.
- concinds 4y ago
  > respond freely You can already filter out non-verified mentions and replies. Presumably that's not going away, and will be used by far more people after this change. It very much is a barrier to entry.
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    But the verified mention is no longer a verified mention. It’s a paid mention. And the people most likely to pay to ensure that their responses are seen broadly are narcissists and people who want to sell you stuff like their latest get rich quick scheme, newsletter Subscription, etc. Actual verified users will dwindle in comparisons and the value of filtering out non “verified” responses will plummet.
  - joegahona 4y ago
    > You can already filter out non-verified mentions and replies. How?

perrygeo 4y ago

> See: every streaming service The key difference is that streaming services purchase valuable content and resell it. There is obvious demand and the market clearly exists. Twitter provides little in the way of mass entertainment, unless you enjoy watching people argue with trolls in an algorithmically-created drama. The content is not created by twitter. There is no obvious market demand; the vast majority of people on the planet wouldn't bother using twitter even if it was free.

nomel 4y ago
> the vast majority of people on the planet wouldn't bother using twitter even if it was free. "wouldn't bother" should be "don't bother". For the world, around 290 million [1], with an internet population of around 4 billion [2], that's around 7%. Things are a bit better for the us, with 41.5 million active users [1], assuming they're all over 18 (209 million), that's about 20% of US population. 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/10/25/twitter-hemorrhaging-its-most-active-users-report-says/?sh=494433726e5e https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/10/25/twit... 2. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=number+of+adults+with+internet+worldwide&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=number+...
- perrygeo 4y ago
  > "wouldn't bother" should be "don't bother" excellent point - I should use the active present tense. That is: "most people alive today don't bother with twitter, despite the fact that it's free." Is it "free" in other meanings of the word - free of charge, free speech, free expression, freedom of religion, freedom to lie, freedom to intimidate? Time will tell.

legitster 4y ago

> $8 is way more than the profitability of an ad supported user. Than an average user. But if you are a power user, you have just sent a valuable marketing signal. > Paying $8 to get your voice heard by more people biases towards those with means Strong disagree. Twitter currently only exists as a bullhorn for already famous people, or a few lucky early adopters.

lupire 4y ago
I mean, being too online, at home, in sweats, doesn't make me a big spender.
watwut 4y ago
I dont think early adopters mattered for years already.
Fomite 4y ago
"Strong disagree. Twitter currently only exists as a bullhorn for already famous people, or a few lucky early adopters." Not if you curate it at all. My two Twitter accounts are dominated by...my fellow academics on one of them, and niche hobbyists on the other.

lupire 4y ago

"Half" ads is extremely common. Disney and Netflix are doing it, and even if you don't have platform ads, the content embeds ads.

deltree7 4y ago
Yeah, there were ads in Newspapers and Magazines too that you paid money. There is an entire generation of entitled people who grew up in 0% VC-funded businesses who are accustomed to getting great products for free who have to adjust to the reality of cost of capital.
- SahAssar 4y ago
  > Yeah, there were ads in Newspapers and Magazines too that you paid money. The publishers of those paid for the content, paid for editing, paid for the physical medium, paid for physical distribution. Twitter is distributing short pieces of text, some images and video on a medium that is famously cheaper than everything that came before it, while not paying anything to the authors and has no editors.

celestialcheese 4y ago

> See: every streaming service. (Edit: ok some streaming services have ads, but for most online content - video, journalism, etc, if you subscribe there are no ads, it's just nickle-and-diming users to give them a bunch of ads, particularly when the marginal cost for Twitter Blue is essentially zero). Even after your edit, this isn't true. NYTimes includes ads in their paid subscription products. AFAIK, most premium news and editorial still includes ads. It's not nearly as many or as intrusive as the free pubs like NYPost, but there's still ads even though I'm paying $20/mo for NYTimes

seydor 4y ago

There's nothing good. When everyone can buy a checkmark, it becomes nothing. The next step is "only allow replies from blue checkmarks" both are bad ideas, and solely because of musk's obsession with bots. Without a mob to prop up people with retweets, twitter will be useless. You cant have the good parts without the ugly parts

oceanplexian 4y ago
Everyone can’t buy a checkmark. Bots will be almost impossible to scale at $8/mo, which means if you deprioritize or hide content from bots without the check, Twitter has a realistic shot at eliminating the bot problem.
- seydor 4y ago
  checkmarks mean prestige, exclusivity, and validation. public figures and journalists love prestige, they live for it. twitter just removed one thing that made it attractive to them. being able to buy it means it s useless for anything other than removing spam that s a very odd way to remove spam . and personally i dont see twitter bots because i dont go searching for them. Musk is completely obsessed with the wrong problem
  - carbine 4y ago
    checkmarks ALSO mean you are who you say you are. making them a feature of Twitter Blue (note: one feature of Twitter Blue) eliminates any status that might have been conferred in the past, yes, but it also goes a long way to sorting legitimate from fake users.
    - dwaite 4y ago
      They are who you say you are - assuming you can do proper verification of individual identity and affiliation, authorization to represent a business or brand, etc. for some portion of that first $8 payment.
- tptacek 4y ago

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

I wonder what would happen if they introduced some kind of scale (boosting a post? sponsored tweets?) $0 - you barely get heard $8 - you kind of get heard $88 - you really get heard $888 - everybody thinks the exact same thing as you do and you can manipulate portions of the population (lol)

jjfoooo5 4y ago
There's no meaningful difference between what you are describing and advertising.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Advertising is a great business to be in apparently, maybe he's diversifying from corporate clients.

AYBABTME 4y ago

FT.com serves ads to paying customers.

andirk 4y ago

My guess is that the $8/mo user pool is a target demo for advertisers who like people who like subscriptions. And there can be a premium charge for targeting the $8 burger

ChrisRR 4y ago

I already think twitter is the worst platform for conversation, the UI is only designed for shouting into the void Every time I see a post it's just followed up by 100 meme gifs, not discussion.