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As if King cant pay 20 dollars.
by ekianjo 4y ago
As if King cant pay 20 dollars.
- dmix 4y agoEveryone seems to either be assuming King somehow cares about paying $$ instead of making a political statement and/or Elon was making a serious earnest reply to King, instead of being his usual needling shitposter self. Neither of which both of their histories supports. Stephen King will quit Twitter just as credibly as Jay-z “retired” from rapping.... like Elon Musk gives a shit about convincing a person worth $500M+ that $20 vs $8/m is too much to ask.
- tptacek 4y agoI'm sure there's politics involved in the fact that King is the first person we're seeing in this public argument with Musk, but the dynamic he's talking about is apolitical and pretty obvious. For true celebrities, of which King is obviously one, Twitter needs them more than they need Twitter. Twitter should pay them to use the platform. Nobody has ever bought a copy of Carrie because they saw the blue checkmark next to Stephen King's name.
- dmix 4y agoIndeed I agree. Musk hasn't addressed how he will compensate or at least incentive creators yet. Having a mainline stream of subscriptions certainly provides more avenues for such a thing. So personally I think the compensation or promotional quid pro quo deals are a very different animal than checkmarks. Unless it means multiple tiers of checkmarks.
- watwut 4y agoStephen King does not live from tweeting.
- paxys 4y agoAs if Elon needs 20 dollars.
- tptacek 4y agoHe needs something, because he's tied tens of billions of dollars of his own money in an LBO that left him in control of a company with about a billion dollars a year of debt service cost.
- tedunangst 4y agoThat's a mere 10 million blue checkmarks he needs to sell.
- themitigating 4y agoAccording to The Guardian, there are about 400,000 verified users on Twitter, as of 2021. That equates to less than 1% of Twitter accounts. Assuming a 100% conversion rate and that number is accurate, 3.2 million a month or $38 a million a year. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/31/elon-musk-charge-twitter-users-verified-accounts-vine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/31/elon-musk...
- kasey_junk 4y agoLol. Elon has made possibly the worst lbo deal in the last decade. He needs to juice this deal like crazy to not lose a ton of money. Just the notoriety of convincing Steven king to pay for a blue checkmark is worth outsized dollars to him and nothing to King.
- themitigating 4y agoStephen King would pay $8, Elon Musk would earn $8 x the number of users that paid.
- HWR_14 4y agoStephen King would not pay. He doesn't need Twitter. He can spend that time writing another book convert to a substack or something.
- 4y ago
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoAs if that were ever the point. It's like charging actors to act, or charging writers to write. Without people like King, twitter has no chance of surviving long-term. It does nothing special. It was simply in the right place at the right time.