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Twitter launches blue check for $7.99 monthly fee
- kramerger 4y agoAccording to some random dude on the internet, the -$4M is mostly Elons interest on his loan, and not the actual Twitter operating loss. Can someone check the math on this? https://ioc.exchange/@alaric/109288546893776528 https://ioc.exchange/@alaric/109288546893776528 (Yes, that is a Mastodon link)
- trident5000 4y agothe astroturfing of whatever this site is has been pretty cringe
- colinsane 4y agobrowsing their feed it feels like a bunch of legitimately new users (which sure, can look cringe if they post without understanding the norms). what astroturfing are you seeing?
- shagmin 4y agoAccording to [0] Elon's debt that he's brought to the table alone is costing approximately $1 billion/year, which is $2.7 million/day... So I guess that's most of it. https://qz.com/here-s-how-many-blue-checks-elon-musk-would-need-to-sel-1849740479 https://qz.com/here-s-how-many-blue-checks-elon-musk-would-n...
- DoesntMatter22 4y agoThey were running a 500 million dollar a year loss before Elon bought so 1.5 million a day roughly. Then 2 mil for debt and half a mil in advertising loss I would guess
- stefan_ 4y agoSee the debt commitment letter (search for "The interest rates under the Bank Facilities"): https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22128214/exhibit-2-to-the-verified-complaint-filed-on-behalf-of-twitter-inc.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22128214/exhibit-2-to... Rough math for $13B at a SOFR of 3% plus 4.5% and you get a nice billion a year of interest, some $2.7M a day.
- iepathos 4y agoNot sure, in 2020 they were losing over $3M a day with an annual loss of $1,136,000,000, but I read they reduced their losses in 2021. Haven't seen any data for 2022.
- renewiltord 4y agoHave they launched it? My Twitter Blue thing still says $4.99. How do I pay for this?
- CharlesW 4y agoI believe it's only available via the iOS app for now.
- akmarinov 4y agoAnd “available” is putting it strongly
- renewiltord 4y agoThank you. Getting it. EDIT: sadly not available in app for me either. Only the $4.99
- sgc 4y agoAd block the blue check. It is meaningless noise now.
- bratao 4y agoSome people are reporting that it is not working https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1588981510916276224 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1588981510916276224 https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1588966359157075969 https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1588966359157075969
- saos 4y agoHopefully teams working on this will get some good sleep now
- vyrotek 4y agoIt's not done or available. https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1588982930399170561 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1588982930399170561 https://twitter.com/esthercrawford/status/1588969361976741888 https://twitter.com/esthercrawford/status/158896936197674188...
- psychlops 4y agoIs calling a production release "shipping" a thing now?
- iLoveOncall 4y agoWhat do you mean by "now"? It's been the case for 15 years at least (I didn't code before that). You're making it seem like "releasing" is more accurately describing what happens when a feature is deployed in production than "shipping" but it's not the case.
- TigeriusKirk 4y agoYes? Since at least the 90s.
- psychlops 4y agoI could see it in the 90s since things were actually mailed. Perhaps I have a mental block picturing the rolling release cycle of an internet app as shipping.
- mdaEyebot 4y agoIt is, however, Saturday afternoon in California. "Yes, Elon, the full self verifying feature was finished before your deadline."
- TillE 4y ago> The team failed to ship by that original one week deadline (and a good part of them got fired, as promised). Assuming that's true, good luck retaining a single developer who's talented enough to get a less crazy job at any number of companies.
- DonHopkins 4y ago"I Just Blue Myself!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GYtgFdXCGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GYtgFdXCGE
- zach_garwood 4y agoThere's gotta be a better way to say that.
- smnrchrds 4y agoDoes this mean the blue check mark no longer implies that the user is who they pretend they are? Anyone can pretend to be any celebrity or politician on Twitter and there is no way to tell which of the dozens of people who pretend to be Famous Person X is actually that person? Or is there still some form of real name policy and identity verification in place?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nolok 4y agoWhich is funny because the blue check mark was to help curb the fake/scams/impersonation/... issue, it was in twitter interest not in the blue-ed users'. Not only making the user paying for that is weird, but then removing the whole pretense of verification on top of it is pretty much recreating an issue Twitter had fought against and almost got under some sort of control (not the bot in general, but the mass scale impersonation). The cherry on the cake being that he wants those paying users to have "less" ads instead of none. They wanted to create a "premium users" group but somehow confusingly mixed it with their verified users group, while removing the verified part. Might make more money, but it will definitely decrease quality of twitter.
- gruez 4y agoThe article mentions verification extensively, so I imagine that there's going to be some level of verification involved. Whether the verification system would have issues like stripe.ian.sh[1], I have no idea. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190606021548/https://stripe.ian.sh/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190606021548/https://stripe.ia...
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoI would be pretty happy if you could only post if you paid the $8/mo, the Jaron Lanier vision of a fair and sustainable social media app that charges its users for the service instead of creating the illusion of free through subtle long term ad-based opinion shifting. Fewer bots, less brigading, ideally no ads, less spam, etc. if done right and thoughtfully. Sounds like a much more enjoyable Twitter. I would be perfectly happy with paying that, even just to support the business model.
- chucky_z 4y agoConsidering Twitters global status $8/mo to post would kill it outside more wealthy countries basically instantly.
- luckylion 4y agoIf I recall correctly, Musk mentioned it would be adjusted to purchasing power parity.
- Retr0id 4y agoMetafilter has been doing something not too dissimilar for a long time - $5 one-time signup fee. I've never used it but I'm sure some people here have, and I'd be interested to hear what it's like in practice.
- hotpotamus 4y agoSomethingawful was $10 to be able to post on the forums at least as far back as the mid aughts (when I became a "goon"). I don't know if that goes all the way back to 1999, but it's not exactly a new model.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoIt's a solid model. At least in the recent few years the feeling of an intentionally closed community of people who have skin in the game raised the quality of conversations. Act like a jackass? Great, get a ban and pay another $10, feed Lowtax (RIP).
- kadomony 4y agoIf everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted. Musk is failing at basic scarcity economics thinking this is what will make Twitter leap into the black.
- systemvoltage 4y agoNo, it just pegs down the elite blue check status. You still need to provide a credit card as a loose proxy for ID check. I am actually quite optimistic. Let the best ideas win. The blue check elitism is coming to an end. Those who are saying this place is turning into 4chan are not saying it in a good faith, it is just ideological opposition of ideas they don't like. Twitter will be very different than 4chan.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y agoDisposable credit cards/visa gift card(s) exist...
- systemvoltage 4y agoYea but a lot more difficult than running 10k bots. That's why I said "a loose proxy".
- spankalee 4y ago"blue check elitism"? No one cares about blue checks
- systemvoltage 4y agoThen why does the press have it? It establishes authority and special status on Twitter. Why does it exist in the first place if "no one cares about it?"
- tchaffee 4y ago> Why does it exist in the first place if "no one cares about it?" Lots of features exist that no one cares about. You seem to be implying UX folks always get it right. Long time but casual Twitter user here. I've never paid attention to the blue check. Anecdotal, but yeah.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dorkwood 4y ago> But Twitter employee Esther Crawford tweeted Saturday that the “new Blue isn’t live yet — the sprint to our launch continues but some folks may see us making updates because we are testing and pushing changes in real-time.” Looks like it hasn't launched yet.
- trqll 4y agoSo he would need 15,000,000 blue checkmarks just to pay off the running debts. But perhaps there are that many Twitter addicts.
- idlewords 4y agoIt has been amusing and edifying to watch people with huge Twitter followings who seem to spend every waking moment on that site making an enormous fuss about being asked to pay for it.
- motohagiography 4y agoAn interesting side effect of this will be identity verification via the existing KYC in payment networks. Given twitters known bot problem, the number of bluechecks will likely be muuuuch lower as real people start to pay for them, and the real people behind the identities have to pay for them instead of their PR staff running them, but this in turn will make them more valuable and meaningful. I might have been less aggressive about the whole thing, but there is likely a future product for arbitrary affinity groups where you can create your own hierarchy of checks for your followers, where one could become a gold, silver, bronze (but likely driven by emojii) follower of some e-celeb, where the cred symbol means something in the local personality fanclub/cult. The nested version of these could become a kind of federated status between affinity groups, where one could display their affinities to selected networks, etc. I could snark all day about blue checks, but their status was the artifact of a time that has passed. In the words of Auden these handsome profiles, "own a world that has had its day."
- toast0 4y ago> An interesting side effect of this will be identity verification via the existing KYC in payment networks. What identity verification? Billing a credit card doesn't usually involve sending or checking a name.
- motohagiography 4y agoMisspell your name next time you pay for something via credit card. The results may surprise.
- Mistletoe 4y ago[flagged]
- berkut 4y agoIf it's only going to be available (at least initially) via the iOS app, does this mean Apple will be taking a slice of the money for in-app purchasing, or is subscription now exempt from that?
- andirk 4y agoLet me guess next article: And you can only pay via [...dude buys buncha Doge again...] Dogecoin!
- tchaffee 4y agoThis is hilarious. Musk forked over billions in excess value to Twitter shareholders and millions to executives with sweet exit packages. I'm just guessing that Twitter users are going to say "thanks nah" to paying his bill for being impulsive and forced into honoring his poorly written purchase contract. I also think it's idealistic in the extreme to think that users or advertisers want free speech.
- nickjj 4y agoThe blue check doesn't make sense to me. There's tens of thousands of James Smiths in the US. Is James Smith #2825 the "real" one? Anyone with that name is technically the verified one. That's who they are. If it's meant for public figures then why do a bunch of non-famous people in tech have blue checkmarks, especially if they have a very uncommon name?