
I would prefer to pay for Twitter - riboflavin
http://justindunham.net/2014/05/i-would-pay-for-twitter/
======
tptacek
You would pay for Twitter, but you would not outbid the advertisers, who
unlike you are willing to subsidize the people who _won 't_ pay for Twitter.
Which is just a complicated way of saying that if Twitter charged for access,
it would charge substantially more than you'd expect them to.

~~~
arjunnarayan
tptacek is right. It's even worse, if you consider two-tiered pricing (ad
supported, and paid), since advertisers _want_ the expensive types who would
pay for access, so they would pay less for the ad supported user group than
you would think.

~~~
1337biz
But you could find a way to work around that issue e.g. by offering certain
features that are fee based and that are unrelated to advertising.

~~~
the_watcher
Twitter could charge for something. They already do (ads). However, some
advertisers will always pay more to reach those on a platform like Twitter,
especially those who are likely wealthy, and those budgets are large enough to
overwhelm whatever you would pay to avoid ads.

If, however, you are simply arguing that Twitter should add some cool features
that you have to pay for, then you are correct. They could, and may.

------
SuperCynical
Excuse my slight condescending tone, but I don't think he really understands
what twitter is for, and who benefits from its service. The model explained,
which was tried by app.net, doesn't coincide with the real idea behind twitter
in the first place.

A neighbor once said to me, we should pay to use the sidewalks in our city; I
don't think she understood the ramifications of such a move, but it made sense
in her mind because she /could/ pay for the sidewalk and the model worked for
her. -yet she didn't understand that the sidewalk wasn't even necessarily
meant for her. The same sides she paces, kids use to travel to school
everyday, homeless persons use to panhandle, families use to travel to work
everyday, and every once in a while some lune is up there with a sign
expressing their view.

Twitter is no different. Sure we use twitter to post about our latest projects
and greatest food pictures, however somewhere someone is using twitter to
alert his friends that government and police are encroaching the neighborhood,
quick alerting those near about a wildfire, or trying to start

Just because you could pay for want, doesn't mean someone else has the means
to pay for necessity. I don't mind sharing a common good/service even though I
know someone else might not be paying the same amount as I.

~~~
mhurron
> I don't think he really understands what twitter is for

I can't really hold that against anyone since I can't figure out what it's for
ether.

> she didn't understand that the sidewalk wasn't even necessarily meant for
> her. ... homeless persons use to panhandle, ... and every once in a while
> some lune is up there with a sign expressing their view.

She probably fully knew this and this was exactly what she was trying to
prevent.

Basically, just like this from elsewhere in the comments -

> I would pay for Twitter as well. Though it would be a huge backlash, I think
> it would clean things up quite a bit.

------
foxit
>(By the way, if significant portions of your userbase are capable of becoming
addicted to your product, consider that it may not be fully ethical to produce
it.)

Well, there goes the gaming industry.

~~~
jamesjyu
Exactly.

Would this also apply to products like Uber? I use it all the time, and can't
imagine life without it. Am I addicted to it? Is it an unethical company
because people love to use it and it provides value to their lives?

~~~
teacup50
"Addiction is the continued repetition of a behavior despite adverse
consequences, or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors."

Would you say you have an addiction to Uber?

~~~
riboflavin
I chose the word "addiction" pretty specifically - does it enrich the user's
life? Uber does. (And you probably don't have a desire to use Uber for hours
every day).

Social gaming (someone mentioned below) does, to a point, and then it's
_engineered_ to go way, way beyond that point.

It's complicated of course - and there's a spectrum - but I think a bad sign
is if your architecture is intended to hack the reward systems of your
customers.

------
jkaljundi
Isn't there a paid Twitter clone that nobody uses that allows you to do
exactly that, pay for it?

~~~
cbhl
I think the app.net guys have been trying to differentiate themselves from
being "Yet Another Twitter Clone", but that's how I first found out about
them.

------
rdl
Wasn't that app.net?

~~~
minimaxir
Pretty much. Then the failure to solve the chicken-and-egg problem hit _hard_.

------
janvdberg
When discussing Twitter I always keep this thing in mind
[http://paulgraham.com/twitter.html](http://paulgraham.com/twitter.html)

Twitter is not a service it is (more) a protocol.

So it that sense people can and should use it anyway they want. And paying for
it doesn't/shouldn't change that. I have a certain way of using Twitter that
makes it valuable for me. But a lot of people I know seem to be shouting
without listening or engaging. But hey, if that works for you, go right ahead.

Also for the other arguments: \- I _do_ feel social pressure in following
back. So that's just personal I guess.

\- I always felt the "favorite" feature is a bit 'off'. I used to use this to
bookmark tweets with interesting links (read later kind of thing). But now it
seems to be used as the "Like" for Twitter. But Twitter itself isn't utilizing
it as such.

People favoriting tweets doesn't change _your_ timeline.

You can go to "Discover" but that is not the same. So I always felt Twitter is
missing a feature OR they are not utilizing the Favorite thing the right way.

------
jiggy2011
The problem is with something like twitter, you don't know how valuable it's
going to be for you until start using it for a length of time. I'd probably be
hesitant to pay even $5 for it if I though I might only tweet once or twice.
Of course I'd be willing to pay more if it became a valuable social or
business tool but I have no way of knowing.

------
nickm12
It's very easy to be friends with someone on Facebook but not follow them. In
the upper right of every post is a menu that lets you unfollow them. At least
today, the concept of "friend" is more about access permissions than
"following"

But ultimately Twitter vs. Facebook is a very dull argument. Yes, the design
of the platform makes a difference, but ultimately any individual's experience
is going to be dominated by the people they interact with. Just because a
person tries platform X and doesn't like it doesn't mean that everyone else is
going to have the same experience.

But neither of these would be what they are as paid services. Their primary
value depends on the vast number of users and that just doesn't happen with
paid services.

------
JeremyMorgan
I would pay for Twitter as well. Though it would be a huge backlash, I think
it would clean things up quite a bit.

I was one of the people who sprung for app.net. It was a crazy idea, and it's
unfortunate it didn't take off. In the time App.net was buzzing with activity
I did notice a significant lack of spam and fake profiles. It was nice, but it
seems now most have abandoned it.

~~~
pbreit
You do understand that the paid aspect of app.net guaranteed that it would
fail? Usage is oxygen, fees are suffocation.

~~~
teacup50
I didn't stop using app.net because of a lack of usage, I stopped using it
because of the lack of decent clients, coupled with the fact that it was just
another walled garden -- not a standardized protocol.

------
streptomycin
Even if you paid for it, they'd still have the economic incentive to extract
money by selling your data and such.

------
poolpool
As already stated this was tried with app.net. A spectacular failure of
marketing aside, no one sprung for it.

This is also partially why ala carte tv programming and iTunes tv is so
expensive: People are not willing to pay anywhere close to how much
advertisers/marketing/PR firms are.

------
lukeweil
I think twitter needs to find its own path to success, and collections from
the users is not it.

Here's my own short opinion about it:
[https://medium.com/p/710ed2905929](https://medium.com/p/710ed2905929)

------
protomyth
I would pay for twitter for a subscription if they let developers sell as many
twitter clients to subscribers because twitter's clients are not very good.

------
stasy
Then they would lose the majority of users. Its a lot harder to increase your
price from $0.00 to $0.01 than increasing your price from $0.01 to $1.00.

------
chippy
I would not pay for Twitter because I am already paying for it.

Remember the saying "if you are getting it for free, you are the product"?

Twitter get's my time and data, adverts are displayed to me and I get to use
the service.

------
badman_ting
Everpix charged. It's not a guarantee of survival.

------
motters
You don't need to pay to ensure the existence of a microblogging system.
pump.io or GNU Social will continue to be around whether or not anyone pays
for them.

~~~
kbar13
the problem with social networks isn't so much the quality or usability of the
platform, but whether or not relevant people use them.

~~~
mikeg8
bingo.

------
nichochar
I would pay for twitter.

