6 ms·

> enough to be willing to pay $8 a month you realize $8 a month is nothing to the majority of adults who would be in the "knowledge worker" category? a month?

> enough to be willing to pay $8 a month you realize $8 a month is nothing to the majority of adults who would be in the "knowledge worker" category? a month? a couple of coffees is $10 and that's a day.

pjc50 3y ago
Those aren't the good content people, though. (Long ago I suggested that Twitter should have allowed people to contribute towards premium accounts for other people, a bit like Reddit Gold. Since a large part of the value derives not from your own posting but other people's.)
Etheryte 3y ago
In my opinion, the question is generally not whether something is a lot of money or not, but if it feels worthwhile relative to other similar things. For example, $8/mo is in the same ballpark as Spotify or Apple music and right now Twitter's blue tick doesn't come anywhere close to providing similar value.
everdrive 3y ago
$8 a month might feel like a waste if you don’t get anything out of it.
- criddell 3y ago
  What I thought was stupid was removing the blue check from people who are worth far more than that per month to Twitter. I thinking about people like Stephen King and large news outlets.
ComposedPattern 3y ago
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manuelabeledo 3y ago
This is true only in a handful of places, for a handful of people. $8 a month is pretty much the monthly cost of a cellphone plan across Europe. One could also get Spotify, or Netflix, at the same price point. Comparatively speaking, paying $8 to have unlimited access to generally low quality content, at the same price point where other platforms offer actual good content, is a waste.
- chme 3y ago
  I don't get the $8/month. If you would pay for verification, that would be a one time payment. If the creators would be payed, then this might be fine, but they aren't. So it is only a fee to use the infrastructure. You get a decent VPS for 8€/month, that has more computing power and bandwidth and storage that one person can use per month compared to what they would use on their systems for just streaming some videos and getting some messages. Sure I don't calculate here the cost for development and maintenance, but this cost is mostly constant with numbers of active users.
raverbashing 3y ago
$8 is a very large amount of money for what's essentially a schmoozing certificate with very little actual benefits
rsynnott 3y ago
It's not just the cost; most people would, I think, be _embarrassed_ to be seen to be paying for attention. I used to pay for a Twitter client, I now pay for a Mastodon client, I contribute to the upkeep of my local friendly Mastodon instance. In all it's in the ballpark of 8EUR/month. There's no world where I would _pay for attention on Twitter_, though. I am somewhat surprised they didn't just charge for client API access/other bits and pieces (that is, charge the user, not the person who makes the client), and nuke the pay-for-attention/pay-for-flair feature before launch as an obviously terrible idea. I think more people would pay for that. Not many people, but more people, and it would be far less corrosive on the user experience as a whole.
- jlokier 3y ago
  > It's not just the cost; most people would, I think, be _embarrassed_ to be seen to be paying for attention. I agree. The Twitter tick had some cool when it was a mark of authenticity. Now it's a bit cringe. The embarrassment factor might work better for Twitter if they offer an option similar to what LinkedIn does for paying users: Give the user the option to disable the blue tick on their account so other people don't know they are paying, while still having access to useful paid account features. Like you I'd be more willing to pay a small amount for API access and useful features if I can do so quietly, without broadcasting the fact.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    I think you actually can hide it now. However, at least speaking for myself, I would be embarrassed to be paying to have my posts artificially boosted, even if this fact was hidden. There's a reason that pay-to-win, particularly in multiplayer games, has always been a slightly difficult sell.
appleflaxen 3y ago
You're right. And the value of a blue check is less than that. Wow.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
Lets see, for $8 a month I can subscribe to a real Journal, like Which. They hire proffesional writers, fact check their content, buy actual consimer products and test them. And they are a charity to boot. Or I can pay Elon for delivering tweets that he got some rando to write for free. The latest content is a right - wing conspiracy that nuclear weapons do not exist, and thay video footage of nuclear ezplosions is staged. https://join.which.co.uk/join/subscribe https://join.which.co.uk/join/subscribe
- Chris2048 3y ago
  > Or I can pay Elon for delivering tweets that he got some rando to write for free I thought the $8 for Elon was for publishers, not consumers?
  - HappySweeney 3y ago
    That is incorrect. Individuals pay $8 per month, government is free, everyone else is $1000 annually.
    - Chris2048 3y ago
      For a Twitter Verified Organization, which you don't need as a consumer?
csydas 3y ago
I don't really get what you're saying here; it's not about the affordability (but let's put that aside for a second), it's that the entire payment model is based on a theory that is demonstrably disproven; the GP post had some rough stats from an article which suggests that Twitter either grossly overestimates how its users use the platform, or completely misunderstands how people want to use Twitter. That the "heavy user" threshold is 3 posts a week is surprising to me, and seems like a bad threshold I'm sure that actual Twitter data is likely more accurate and shows different numbers, but it's not really about the usage I guess, it's about the promise of more followers and engagement. But demonstrably this is not the case, and many persons who did buy the Blue Check complained they didn't see the increase in activity it was advertised that the Blue Check would give. The signal behind what a Blue Check means has been quite noisy for a very long time, even before Musk's take over, and the decisions post-Musk on what a Blue Check really means/does is very confusing and unclear. Why would I pay $8 a month to maybe get some followers by being promoted when I could just spend a few hundred USD once and just buy followers from some follower farm, which is arguably a better signal of "hey, this person is worth following?" as opposed to the Blue Check? It doesn't matter if it's just a "couple of coffees", why pay for something that arguably provides 0 benefit for me? Twitter should not have tried to sell identify validation as a major marketable service; they already try to validate your identity even without it, and it doesn't seem to benefit anyone, not even Twitter. Game companies figured out how to monetize useless things with cosmetics and such, and if Twitter wanted to monetize heavily, they should have just done that. Fancier reactions, more edits and stupid stuff for the changeable usernames, etc. The idea that they can somehow sell the user attention is a folly; yes, they gate and can control the feeds, but the users always have the option of just not following or even just not looking. It's a resource Twitter _never_ really had control over; they might as well have been selling ocean wranglers, offering that someone will beat the tide with whips for you if the ocean pisses you off for some reason; it's about the same effectualness, and equally useless service.
nottorp 3y ago
> a couple of coffees is $10 and that's a day. Please cut that. Everyone wants 'a couple of coffees' and it adds up even for SV techbros.
- ehnto 3y ago
  Different location, different economy and different currency, but yeah buying coffee out is crazy and I can't believe I was stupid enough to do it for so long. I convinced myself I "needed the time out of the office" yeah cool, go for a walk you dork and make coffee in the kitchen like the person with bills that you are (is what I now tell myself)
  - nottorp 3y ago
    > buying coffee out is crazy That too, but that wasn't the point :)
- AndrewOMartin 3y ago
  I'm convinced Starbucks is paid off by SV to increase their prices so more things can be described as "just the price of a coffee".
Hamuko 3y ago
I could definitely afford $8 but why would I give Elon $8 per month in order to tell people that I took a shit that was thiiiis big? The blue checkmark has questionable benefits at best, and the increased character limit for paychecks is ruining the essence of the service.
mbork_pl 3y ago
> $8 a month is nothing to the majority of adults who would be in the "knowledge worker" category This is a very US-centric take and almost insulting for people living in certain other areas of the world. In my country (central Europe, as is easy to guess), an experienced teacher (definitely a "knowledge worker" in my book) may earn about $10k per year. Not sure how much a beginner one gets, but surely less. $8 per month is a lot then.
- hnick 3y ago
  Not only that, the $8 might not be much, but what you get isn't either. If everyone felt entitled to charge $8 for not much in return that can add up and mean real money even to US-centric people, once they're paying it to 50 different services every month that deliver (and ask) for "nothing".
yomlica8 3y ago
Maybe, but the time and effort it takes to wade through the dark patterns when you want to cancel are expensive for everyone.

pjc50 3y ago

Those aren't the good content people, though. (Long ago I suggested that Twitter should have allowed people to contribute towards premium accounts for other people, a bit like Reddit Gold. Since a large part of the value derives not from your own posting but other people's.)

Etheryte 3y ago

In my opinion, the question is generally not whether something is a lot of money or not, but if it feels worthwhile relative to other similar things. For example, $8/mo is in the same ballpark as Spotify or Apple music and right now Twitter's blue tick doesn't come anywhere close to providing similar value.

everdrive 3y ago

$8 a month might feel like a waste if you don’t get anything out of it.

criddell 3y ago
What I thought was stupid was removing the blue check from people who are worth far more than that per month to Twitter. I thinking about people like Stephen King and large news outlets.

ComposedPattern 3y ago

[dead]

manuelabeledo 3y ago

This is true only in a handful of places, for a handful of people. $8 a month is pretty much the monthly cost of a cellphone plan across Europe. One could also get Spotify, or Netflix, at the same price point. Comparatively speaking, paying $8 to have unlimited access to generally low quality content, at the same price point where other platforms offer actual good content, is a waste.

chme 3y ago
I don't get the $8/month. If you would pay for verification, that would be a one time payment. If the creators would be payed, then this might be fine, but they aren't. So it is only a fee to use the infrastructure. You get a decent VPS for 8€/month, that has more computing power and bandwidth and storage that one person can use per month compared to what they would use on their systems for just streaming some videos and getting some messages. Sure I don't calculate here the cost for development and maintenance, but this cost is mostly constant with numbers of active users.

raverbashing 3y ago

$8 is a very large amount of money for what's essentially a schmoozing certificate with very little actual benefits

rsynnott 3y ago

It's not just the cost; most people would, I think, be _embarrassed_ to be seen to be paying for attention. I used to pay for a Twitter client, I now pay for a Mastodon client, I contribute to the upkeep of my local friendly Mastodon instance. In all it's in the ballpark of 8EUR/month. There's no world where I would _pay for attention on Twitter_, though. I am somewhat surprised they didn't just charge for client API access/other bits and pieces (that is, charge the user, not the person who makes the client), and nuke the pay-for-attention/pay-for-flair feature before launch as an obviously terrible idea. I think more people would pay for that. Not many people, but more people, and it would be far less corrosive on the user experience as a whole.

jlokier 3y ago
> It's not just the cost; most people would, I think, be _embarrassed_ to be seen to be paying for attention. I agree. The Twitter tick had some cool when it was a mark of authenticity. Now it's a bit cringe. The embarrassment factor might work better for Twitter if they offer an option similar to what LinkedIn does for paying users: Give the user the option to disable the blue tick on their account so other people don't know they are paying, while still having access to useful paid account features. Like you I'd be more willing to pay a small amount for API access and useful features if I can do so quietly, without broadcasting the fact.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I think you actually can hide it now. However, at least speaking for myself, I would be embarrassed to be paying to have my posts artificially boosted, even if this fact was hidden. There's a reason that pay-to-win, particularly in multiplayer games, has always been a slightly difficult sell.

appleflaxen 3y ago

You're right. And the value of a blue check is less than that. Wow.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

Lets see, for $8 a month I can subscribe to a real Journal, like Which. They hire proffesional writers, fact check their content, buy actual consimer products and test them. And they are a charity to boot. Or I can pay Elon for delivering tweets that he got some rando to write for free. The latest content is a right - wing conspiracy that nuclear weapons do not exist, and thay video footage of nuclear ezplosions is staged. https://join.which.co.uk/join/subscribe https://join.which.co.uk/join/subscribe

Chris2048 3y ago
> Or I can pay Elon for delivering tweets that he got some rando to write for free I thought the $8 for Elon was for publishers, not consumers?
- HappySweeney 3y ago
  That is incorrect. Individuals pay $8 per month, government is free, everyone else is $1000 annually.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    For a Twitter Verified Organization, which you don't need as a consumer?

csydas 3y ago

I don't really get what you're saying here; it's not about the affordability (but let's put that aside for a second), it's that the entire payment model is based on a theory that is demonstrably disproven; the GP post had some rough stats from an article which suggests that Twitter either grossly overestimates how its users use the platform, or completely misunderstands how people want to use Twitter. That the "heavy user" threshold is 3 posts a week is surprising to me, and seems like a bad threshold I'm sure that actual Twitter data is likely more accurate and shows different numbers, but it's not really about the usage I guess, it's about the promise of more followers and engagement. But demonstrably this is not the case, and many persons who did buy the Blue Check complained they didn't see the increase in activity it was advertised that the Blue Check would give. The signal behind what a Blue Check means has been quite noisy for a very long time, even before Musk's take over, and the decisions post-Musk on what a Blue Check really means/does is very confusing and unclear. Why would I pay $8 a month to maybe get some followers by being promoted when I could just spend a few hundred USD once and just buy followers from some follower farm, which is arguably a better signal of "hey, this person is worth following?" as opposed to the Blue Check? It doesn't matter if it's just a "couple of coffees", why pay for something that arguably provides 0 benefit for me? Twitter should not have tried to sell identify validation as a major marketable service; they already try to validate your identity even without it, and it doesn't seem to benefit anyone, not even Twitter. Game companies figured out how to monetize useless things with cosmetics and such, and if Twitter wanted to monetize heavily, they should have just done that. Fancier reactions, more edits and stupid stuff for the changeable usernames, etc. The idea that they can somehow sell the user attention is a folly; yes, they gate and can control the feeds, but the users always have the option of just not following or even just not looking. It's a resource Twitter _never_ really had control over; they might as well have been selling ocean wranglers, offering that someone will beat the tide with whips for you if the ocean pisses you off for some reason; it's about the same effectualness, and equally useless service.

nottorp 3y ago

> a couple of coffees is $10 and that's a day. Please cut that. Everyone wants 'a couple of coffees' and it adds up even for SV techbros.

ehnto 3y ago
Different location, different economy and different currency, but yeah buying coffee out is crazy and I can't believe I was stupid enough to do it for so long. I convinced myself I "needed the time out of the office" yeah cool, go for a walk you dork and make coffee in the kitchen like the person with bills that you are (is what I now tell myself)
- nottorp 3y ago
  > buying coffee out is crazy That too, but that wasn't the point :)
AndrewOMartin 3y ago
I'm convinced Starbucks is paid off by SV to increase their prices so more things can be described as "just the price of a coffee".

Hamuko 3y ago

I could definitely afford $8 but why would I give Elon $8 per month in order to tell people that I took a shit that was thiiiis big? The blue checkmark has questionable benefits at best, and the increased character limit for paychecks is ruining the essence of the service.

mbork_pl 3y ago

> $8 a month is nothing to the majority of adults who would be in the "knowledge worker" category This is a very US-centric take and almost insulting for people living in certain other areas of the world. In my country (central Europe, as is easy to guess), an experienced teacher (definitely a "knowledge worker" in my book) may earn about $10k per year. Not sure how much a beginner one gets, but surely less. $8 per month is a lot then.

hnick 3y ago
Not only that, the $8 might not be much, but what you get isn't either. If everyone felt entitled to charge $8 for not much in return that can add up and mean real money even to US-centric people, once they're paying it to 50 different services every month that deliver (and ask) for "nothing".

yomlica8 3y ago

Maybe, but the time and effort it takes to wade through the dark patterns when you want to cancel are expensive for everyone.