
Twitter says it's looking at subscription options as ad revenue drops sharply - calcifer
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/23/tech/twitter-subscription-earnings/index.html
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Abishek_Muthian
I couldn't shake the image of Twitter being an enthusiast, cool kids,
wordsmiths only type platform from my head. Probably because I had an account
since when Twitter servers couldn't take it and used to display a dolphin
image(But, don't check my Twitter account, I didn't use it much) although I
knew Twitter is not that anymore.

So, I always told to myself that like most other enthusiast platforms Twitter
is struggling to make money unlike Facebook where its users don't care about
non-contextual ads as long as its attractive and Facebook will go to any
length to get a click on the Ad even if it means they are from a click farm
from Philipines, Bangladesh, India; its advertisers didn't seem to mind as
long as the 'Page Like' count increased.

But then, after I started using Reddit; I thought this is never going to make
any money as it is a much more enthusiast platform than Twitter and every
subreddit is a platform on its own where non-context content will be brushed
aside. Then when Reddit introduced 'Awards', it blew me away; it seems like
they have figured out the best possible way to monetise their platform. I
don't know how much revenue it has brought to Reddit, but I could calculate
some threads having thousands of dollars worth of awards almost every other
day i.e. Normal users paying money for Internet commendation.

Twitter needs to figure out what's its equivalent for Reddit awards without
compromising its integrity and becoming a Facebook.

~~~
flak48
> used to display a dolphin

Ah, the retired fail whale

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/the-s...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/the-
story-behind-twitters-fail-whale/384313/)

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
Ah ha! I had the image of the whale in my head but wrote dolphin! I'll let it
be and thank you for the correction.

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mgav
I bet a $12/year "Editor" option that simply allowed those users to use
<i>italics</i> would be widely used, generating $$$ without disrupting what
people love about Twitter.

~~~
netsharc
Just googled the replacement hacks using unicode. If Twitter offered styles
for a fee, people would probably use those workarounds, e.g. to get italics
𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔.

Although these are probably not searchable.. Edit: hmm Ctrl-F actually finds
"string"!

~~~
progval
> Although these are probably not searchable.. Edit: hmm Ctrl-F actually finds
> "string"!

Depends on the search engine. And Ctrl-F is already unusable on Twitter Web
anyway, because it only works on tweets in the viewport (or close to it)

~~~
whatch
Is it browser's limitation?

I had issues, when tried to search in a very long <textarea> with scrollbar.
Firefox was able to find only currently visible occurrences. That was not a
viewport issue, of course, but looks very similar. Would love to know more
about all this.

~~~
progval
No, it's because Twitter Web removes elements from the DOM when they are far
from the viewport.

There are two ways you can see it:

1\. Open a DOM debugger, select an element in a tweet, scroll down. Eventually
the element disappears.

2\. In Firefox, scroll down, right click, "Take a screenshot", "Complete
page". You'll see tweet far from the viewport, as well as header and sidebars
are invisible.

The motivation is probably to make it faster, but it's unclear to me why
removing (and later re-adding) elements in Javascript would be more efficient
than the browser internally dealing with it.

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kirillzubovsky
It might be too little too late. Twitter made a lot of sense in 2010 when you
only saw messages from the people you followed, and only discovered new people
when those people specifically put their words into your stream. It was
valuable, even if people were tweeting about their vacations and sandwiches.

App.net tried to launch a paid version of Twitter and it almost succeeded, but
they weren't able to get a critical mass to convert all at once. Twitter was
still more valuable as 8 out of 10 of your friends were still on Twitter, not
App.

It has changed though. With more users and the new algorithmic timeline, If
you are just starting out, you have no chance at getting good value out.
Twitter decides what you see, whether you like it or not. It's like the TV
from 1984 that is continuously bringing junk food into your living room. You
don't get a remote, you only get a choice to have it, or not to have it in
your house.

Twitter used to deliver unprecedented value 1:1, and now it extracts value
from 100,000 and delivers it to 1. Unless you are the one, there is no sense
in paying for it.

~~~
jsnell
> App.net tried to launch a paid version of Twitter and it almost succeeded,
> but they weren't able to get a critical mass to convert all at once.

Did it really almost succeed? Looking at the numbers from the Wikipedia page,
it got a decent number of people joining right at the start. Then it seems to
have gotten very limited user engagement from those people, and after the
first year the subscriptions could only barely cover the hosting costs.

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ryan29
I hate Twitter and think it’s a huge hassle and a waste of time, but I would
pay for a domain verified Twitter handle / namespace that could be used for
product feedback / support.

Ex: twitter.com/example.com

It would also be advantageous for incumbents to make a system like that the
norm / expectation because it would reduce the gold rush effect for new
platforms where people rush to reserve their handles.

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dstaley
> "We want to make sure any new line of revenue is complementary to our
> advertising business,"

I know the above probably means this is a longshot, but here's what I want
from a subscription:

1\. No promoted tweets 2\. Permanently disable algorithmic timeline (what
Twitter calls "Home")

That's it. I pay $12/month not to see ads on YouTube, and I'd easily pay that
same amount for an ad+algorithm-free experience in the Twitter native app.

~~~
jjeaff
I suspect that the people willing to pay $12 to avoid ads are also the most
valuable targets for advertisers. I suspect in aggregate, they are actually
worth much more than $12 month.

~~~
dstaley
I suspect many of those who are ad-averse like me use third party clients and
ad blockers, and have an inherent distrust of ads, so I doubt I'm worth much
to an advertiser considering my engagement rate is zero.

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tdeck
I always thought Twitter should just charge people to allow additional
followers. So let's say your first 5k followers are free, and after that you
need to pay some amount to let additional people follow you. Incentives are
aligned with the vanity and self-promotion culture of Twitter.

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ssully
I know people will hate this idea, but I would like to see what it would look
like if they limited the amount of tweets a free account was allowed to send
and even deprioritize those tweets to only show up on to their followers.
Seems like it could curtail a lot of the toxicity. Obviously the other side of
that coin is that it could limit discussions and interactions, but maybe it
would show how useless a lot of the interactions are on the site.

Of course, I say this as someone who never tweets. I only use Twitter to
aggregate news/interesting people. A bigger question is how can they make a
user like me pay.

~~~
lucasmullens
Sounds like it would give a stronger voice to the wealthy and suppress the
voices of the poor who can't afford a subscription.

~~~
ssully
This is actually a good point that I didn't consider.

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FalconSensei
What I would like on twitter, and I would pay for it:

\- Option to post 1 NSFW tweet, instead on that being per account

\- My likes being private, and no one seeing them in their timelines

\- not seeing anyone's likes in my timeline.

\- not seeing any 'recommended' tweets on my timeline (tweets included because
someone I follow, follow that account)

~~~
progval
You may be interested in joining the Fediverse, a federated network of
microblogging software (Mastodon, Pleroma, ...). Most of the implementations
support all four of these features.

And most of it is free and/or donation-supported.

But of course, you don't get the same people as on Twitter.

~~~
FalconSensei
I tried Mastodon a couple times. But the lack of search (can only search
hashtags) made it hard to find people/discussions.

I use Twitter to follow some publisher/anime bloggers, and there's none on any
federated network, at least not anyone relevant.

And people on my Twitter are more chill than the ones I met on Mastodon (and
mainly the ones that used Pleroma). I remember 2 times I had problems there:

One was when I mentioned something about Windows, like, just said that I used
it, so a few people started offending me (not mocking or joking).

Another time, I posted a picture when I was watching anime on the TV. Someone
asked how I took screenshots from the episodes. I said that I just had a
script that downloaded from Reddit. The person got furious because 'I was
leeching from the community and not contributing'.

So, I dumped the fediverse and I got back on Twitter where, in 10 years, I
don't remember something like that ever happening.

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dawnerd
Charge for verified. 100 bucks should cover the cost of them actually
verifying people, and allow us commoners to get access to the features
currently gated off.

~~~
chinathrow
> to get access to the features currently gated off.

Such as? I had no idea verified users have more features other than the blue
checkmark.

~~~
evan_
they get more quality filters, such as the ability to only see replies from
other verified users, or only users who have verified phone numbers

~~~
ac29
A "member" tier subscription that let you restrict to seeing only content from
other members (or verified users) might cut down on a lot of the noise there.

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Havoc
Can’t imagine paying for that. It’s one big pile of outrage that I’m not at
all convinced is a net positive in my life

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janitor61
Nationalize it and get taxpayer money

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imedadel
A pro account for editing tweets? This can actually be quite profitable.

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minikites
Everyone loves to hate on Facebook for ruining societal discourse but Twitter
shares just as much of the blame. I hope they both go bankrupt.

~~~
benlumen
You're downvoted but I understand your sentiment.

From where I'm sitting, Twitter is doing so much more damage than Facebook
that it's not even close.

My Facebook is full of old friends from school not saying much, and some local
groups moaning about local goings on.

Twitter, on the other hand, is an absolute and total perversion of human
communication. An arbitrary point-scoring game with a tiny character limit,
dominated by activists whose skills at the game are carrying their piss-poor
arguments. I've got a friend who obviously gets her opinions from Twitter and
then can't formulate coherent sentences in real world conversation to defend
them. It's total rot.

~~~
cubano
And to add insult to injury, so many otherwise sensible people seem to equate
Twitter directly to the real-world and don't realize its being gamed by
botnets and activists who are pushing political views.

Many very smart professionals literally look to Twitter for feedback and even
emotional support for their work, and literally have meltdowns if the
Twitverse takes them to task over some unforgivable transgression.

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m3kw9
Could go something like this. Say Elon Musk, he will have a subscription tweet
feed that users can subscribe to, all users of the subscription get to see the
posts first. The free users will see them after 24hrs. Since twitters strength
is real time, they can sell from that strength.

