<story><title>Twitter Blue for $8/Month</title><url>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587498907336118274</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paxys</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s the core problem with this approach. Elon and others have the idea in their head that Twitter is a social graph where people come to interact with each other, and everyone is relatively equal. So every user paying $X&amp;#x2F;mo to solidify their place in the graph makes some conceptual sense.&lt;p&gt;In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. A tiny percentage of users are creators while the vast majority are consumers. If you go by the rough count of their currently verified accounts, only ~0.16% of monthly active users are producing content of any real value.&lt;p&gt;An average user (part of the 99.9%) isn&amp;#x27;t going to care about any status or badges – they are only there to look at memes.&lt;p&gt;Creators and influencers on the other hand are going to care, but (1) there are too few of them for their $8&amp;#x2F;mo to make a substantial difference to the company&amp;#x27;s bottom line, and (2) the platform needs them as much as they need platform.&lt;p&gt;So you really want to instead do the exact opposite – ask the consumers to pay and fund your creators with that money.</text></item><item><author>dan-robertson</author><text>The dynamics on Twitter are quite weird. There’s a small number of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is an important part of their work or life. If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software ($100 pa seems pretty cheap there). Indeed maybe media publications should be paying for the blue checks for their staff. But on the other hand, these people are going to represent a large part of the draw of Twitter and so maybe Twitter should be paying them instead.&lt;p&gt;But other people use Twitter in different ways. If you mostly use it as a social network between your friends you might not care because they’ll presumably see your tweets because they follow you rather than because they found them in search or whatever.&lt;p&gt;If you’re using Twitter as a forum for discussions about some topic of your interest, maybe you’ll end up feeling crowded out in replies by people with the check. But if you’re at risk of being crowded out then maybe Twitter isn’t working so well as a forum. And I think that if eg A follows B and B retweets you, A should see your tweet whether or not you have a check. Maybe that isn’t so true with the non-chronological feed. If people in the community follow you then, depending on the dynamics, your opinions could still be spread via retweet rather than getting lucky in your position in the replies, no?&lt;p&gt;If you’re some reply guy, maybe your tweets should be downranked but then if you’re serious about it then I guess you’ll pay.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>koonsolo</author><text>&amp;gt; In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook.&lt;p&gt;There is a very big difference between Twitter and YouTube, and it&amp;#x27;s obvious once you know it.&lt;p&gt;Look at the most popular people on twitter: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_most-followed_Twitter_accounts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_most-followed_Twitte...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;All celebrities outside of twitter.&lt;p&gt;Then look at YouTube: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_most-subscribed_YouTube_channels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;List_of_most-subscribed_YouT...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Almost all made famous by YouTube.&lt;p&gt;Twitter has no real &amp;quot;content creators&amp;quot;, YouTube does.</text></comment>
<story><title>Twitter Blue for $8/Month</title><url>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1587498907336118274</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paxys</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s the core problem with this approach. Elon and others have the idea in their head that Twitter is a social graph where people come to interact with each other, and everyone is relatively equal. So every user paying $X&amp;#x2F;mo to solidify their place in the graph makes some conceptual sense.&lt;p&gt;In reality Twitter is more akin to YouTube than Facebook. A tiny percentage of users are creators while the vast majority are consumers. If you go by the rough count of their currently verified accounts, only ~0.16% of monthly active users are producing content of any real value.&lt;p&gt;An average user (part of the 99.9%) isn&amp;#x27;t going to care about any status or badges – they are only there to look at memes.&lt;p&gt;Creators and influencers on the other hand are going to care, but (1) there are too few of them for their $8&amp;#x2F;mo to make a substantial difference to the company&amp;#x27;s bottom line, and (2) the platform needs them as much as they need platform.&lt;p&gt;So you really want to instead do the exact opposite – ask the consumers to pay and fund your creators with that money.</text></item><item><author>dan-robertson</author><text>The dynamics on Twitter are quite weird. There’s a small number of users with potentially lots of followers for whom Twitter is an important part of their work or life. If you’re a journalist, being on Twitter is basically part of your job so maybe you should have to pay a bit more just like the customer of some business software ($100 pa seems pretty cheap there). Indeed maybe media publications should be paying for the blue checks for their staff. But on the other hand, these people are going to represent a large part of the draw of Twitter and so maybe Twitter should be paying them instead.&lt;p&gt;But other people use Twitter in different ways. If you mostly use it as a social network between your friends you might not care because they’ll presumably see your tweets because they follow you rather than because they found them in search or whatever.&lt;p&gt;If you’re using Twitter as a forum for discussions about some topic of your interest, maybe you’ll end up feeling crowded out in replies by people with the check. But if you’re at risk of being crowded out then maybe Twitter isn’t working so well as a forum. And I think that if eg A follows B and B retweets you, A should see your tweet whether or not you have a check. Maybe that isn’t so true with the non-chronological feed. If people in the community follow you then, depending on the dynamics, your opinions could still be spread via retweet rather than getting lucky in your position in the replies, no?&lt;p&gt;If you’re some reply guy, maybe your tweets should be downranked but then if you’re serious about it then I guess you’ll pay.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xtracto</author><text>I always felt Twitter as &amp;quot;old man yells at cloud&amp;quot; kind of communication. I&amp;#x27;ve never seen proper &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; created (like pinterest, tik tok, etc). Most of the &amp;quot;content&amp;quot; I see are the asinine multi-post threads and text-pictures notices from angry people&amp;#x2F;companies.</text></comment>