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The point of the blue checkmark, to both Twitter and their users, is to make the platform more valuable. Previously it was used to give more confidence that so

The point of the blue checkmark, to both Twitter and their users, is to make the platform more valuable. Previously it was used to give more confidence that someone is famous. That worked. Now, it's changing purposes, but it makes as much if not more sense. You lose a bit of ability to tell who is famous, but in exchange you get more significant bot and spam prevention as well a less advertiser dependent revenue model.

dwaite 4y ago
> You lose a bit of ability to tell who is famous, but in exchange you get more significant bot and spam prevention as well a less advertiser dependent revenue model. People who want to spam a cryptocurrency fraud will make a lot more than even a year's worth of Twitter Blue. Phone number verification is insufficient, you need to tie to a real world, unique identity to prevent spam. And, Twitter has 450 million monthly active users (by some estimates - very hard to tell with how volatile the user base has been over the last few months). If you took an optimistic 1% conversion ratio for $100/yr subscriptions (typical freemium uptake metrics), that is $110 million dollars a quarter revenue. Twitter used to get $1 bil in advertising revenue for quarter, which would still mean 90% of their revenue would come from advertising. Unfortunately - estimates are that they have lost between 70 and 89% of their advertising revenue, the uptake for Twitter Blue is estimated to be well below 1%, and the leveraged buyout added a billion dollars of additional interest Twitter owes a year. There's a general decline in advertising revenue, but some (such as myself) suspect the major brands looked at the volatility of Twitter and decided to target a disproportionate amount of their cuts there.
- nwienert 4y ago
  Phone number plus credit card is pretty strong, being two scarce resources combined. They've only just begun to roll it out, are you assuming they will have 0 future growth only a few months into launching? Not only that, but the benefits of verifying have slowly ratcheted up, and with the algorithm now showing clear benefit I'd expect sharp growth. Finally, why bring their revenue into this? That's a totally separate conversation. I'd be happy to have it, but not really related to whether this alternative verification scheme makes sense.
  - dwaite 4y ago
    I brought revenue into it because you claimed that they got a new less advertiser-dependent revenue model. I argue that the mix of a healthy Twitter monetizing advertising and paid individual user accounts would still be 90% advertising.

dwaite 4y ago

> You lose a bit of ability to tell who is famous, but in exchange you get more significant bot and spam prevention as well a less advertiser dependent revenue model. People who want to spam a cryptocurrency fraud will make a lot more than even a year's worth of Twitter Blue. Phone number verification is insufficient, you need to tie to a real world, unique identity to prevent spam. And, Twitter has 450 million monthly active users (by some estimates - very hard to tell with how volatile the user base has been over the last few months). If you took an optimistic 1% conversion ratio for $100/yr subscriptions (typical freemium uptake metrics), that is $110 million dollars a quarter revenue. Twitter used to get $1 bil in advertising revenue for quarter, which would still mean 90% of their revenue would come from advertising. Unfortunately - estimates are that they have lost between 70 and 89% of their advertising revenue, the uptake for Twitter Blue is estimated to be well below 1%, and the leveraged buyout added a billion dollars of additional interest Twitter owes a year. There's a general decline in advertising revenue, but some (such as myself) suspect the major brands looked at the volatility of Twitter and decided to target a disproportionate amount of their cuts there.

nwienert 4y ago
Phone number plus credit card is pretty strong, being two scarce resources combined. They've only just begun to roll it out, are you assuming they will have 0 future growth only a few months into launching? Not only that, but the benefits of verifying have slowly ratcheted up, and with the algorithm now showing clear benefit I'd expect sharp growth. Finally, why bring their revenue into this? That's a totally separate conversation. I'd be happy to have it, but not really related to whether this alternative verification scheme makes sense.
- dwaite 4y ago
  I brought revenue into it because you claimed that they got a new less advertiser-dependent revenue model. I argue that the mix of a healthy Twitter monetizing advertising and paid individual user accounts would still be 90% advertising.