

Would you pay for Foursquare or Twitter? - wadehammes
http://www.wadehammes.com/blog/06/would-you-pay-for-4sq-or-twitter-smy-2/

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bjplink
I don't know how many sports fans we have around these parts but Twitter has
become an outstanding source for breaking sports news. At the trade deadline
for the NBA and NHL last season, news was breaking on Twitter well before the
major networks were announcing it. Some of the best beat writers are on
Twitter posting major announcements before they even bother to write a story
for their own newspaper. I would pretty willingly pay to keep having access to
that information.

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dolinsky
Unless you see a specific advantage related to your fantasy __*ball team I
don't see why one would be willing to pay to have access to information that
would be coming free a few minutes later with a lot more substance behind the
information.

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theBobMcCormick
Nope. I'm on the fence about whether I get enough value out of twitter to even
bother to keep checking it, much less pay actual money for it.

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MicahWedemeyer
Yes, I would, at least for Twitter (I don't use Foursquare). I would also pay
for Facebook, Gmail, Google, Google Analytics, Hacker News, and a whole slew
of other sites that are free.

I'm sympathetic to the (probably true) view that they never would have grown
to their size (and usefulness) if they were paid services, but that doesn't
mean they can't just flip the switch today.

As someone who runs a freemium site, I know how important real (non-ad)
revenue is. I also don't mind paying for good quality service or content.
Finally, paid services have fewer scammers and bots.

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wadehammes
That is exactly the positives I came to with the cost-benefit analysis I did
for this topic in the article that is linked. There are so many variables that
play into it.

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lleger
Foursquare – definitely not, but then again I don't use it. Maybe someone who
actually plays the game would.

Twitter — possibly. It depends if twitter had the same pervasiveness as it
does today. In reality, that's probably impossible: twitter's ubiquity is due
in large part to the lower barrier of entrance. So it seems that paying for it
reduces the utility of the product and, therefore, makes it not worth the
money.

In summary: no.

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BudVVeezer
I am all for foursquare charging its users. I suspect that would strongly
reduce the amount of spam I get from friends.

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generalk
Twitter I might pay for, but it would have to be either much more reliable, or
distributed. Maybe not even then. Publishing status updates that anyone can
subscribe to, and having awesome lines of communication with folks I'd
otherwise never speak to is awesome, but it seems there's something missing
before I'd pay for it.

Foursquare: Nope. It seems to me that the core of Foursquare is a feature that
can be replicated on any site, and the only thing that makes it unique is the
badges and the potential deals with retailers. Neither of which I'm willing to
pay for.

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Vistico
I would defiantly pay.. just like i pay for any other service I enjoy.. if I
would like to continue using the service or for the service to grow it needs
support so why not.

If I don't care about the service then of course I won't.

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karanbhangui
Forget about even answering the question in the title. This is a poorly
written article on a very silly premise.

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antidaily
Probably not. But only because I think it would be less popular.

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pibefision
No

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grep
Hell NO!

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pclark
This is silly. Social networking requires critical mass, else it's useless.
Something like 2% - 5% of users pay for freemium services.

So imagine if you had only 2% of your friends on FourSquare, or Facebook, or
Twitter. Much less valuable, no?

Also, These companies can make _far more money_ via other business models.

Users > Revenues for some consumer startups. Grow now, monetize later.

