

An Open Letter to Twitter: Let me pay for better service - siddhant
http://vocamus.net/dave/?p=1276

======
Kylekramer
People who want to pay needs to understand that:

A. You are the exception. I am willing to bet .1% of users would be a
overestimation of Twitterers willing to pay.

B. Setting up premium accounts and a payment system would probably run fairly
close to break even. Not mention the additional customer service that would be
expected and the complications that arise from splitting the userbase.

C. You aren't the real money. Twitter wants Coca Cola's money, CBS's money,
etc. They don't care about pocket change from Joe Blogger. They are selling a
package of 200 million people straight up, not a package of 200 million minus
the most engaged and loyal users.

~~~
f1lt3r
Yeah but those companies, Coca Cola etc, can only pay as long as Twitter have
the user-base. And if the adverts cause users to go visit the site less, then
their revenue stream from advertising would shrink.

Would they put averts in the Developer-API responses too? One one hand it's
free to use, on the other hand it's being paid for by advertising. What
company wants to be a slave to advertising companies? That sounds like a
difficult situation to be in.

~~~
flyt
A 30-minute long TV show is actually only about 21.5 minutes long. The rest is
advertising. People will tolerate it if the rest of the content is relevant
and engaging.

If the ads are well targeted then they make people even more accepting of
them.

~~~
padobson
I pay Netflix $9 a month and I have no commercials to speak of. What is the
marginal ad revenue of every user on Twitter? If it's <$1/mo then there should
be a premium, ad-less Twitter available for purchase at $1.99/mo.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
You're not accounting to the effect a premium service has on marginal ad
revenue per user. It goes down as the people with disposable income (the most
desirable demographic) opt out of ads.

~~~
robryan
I bet th effect of even of the most engaged users isn't worth $10/month in ad
revenue. Although I think there would be an irrational element in the pitch of
reach the whole Twitter userbase vs reach the users that haven't paid.

------
jedberg
As someone who runs a site that receives similar requests (I paid for reddit
gold, why don't I get faster access), let me tell you, it just isn't that
easy.

Their architecture, like ours, can't just be split into fastlane and slowlane.

So while I appreciate what the guy is asking for, it just isn't that easy.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Oddly enough, it's something that Livejournal does:
<http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=74>

~~~
metabrew
Last.fm do something similar: subscribers get a special cookie which jumps the
queue on the http load balancer (perlbal).

Thing is, if there are queues at the load balancer, something already went
wrong.. so it only really benefits subscribers on certain, rare occasions.

------
tedunangst
Twitter can't let you pay them. That would immediately cap the market value of
each user and Twitter's target valuation per eyeball is way more than you'd
likely be willing to pay.

~~~
orijing
Interesting point. Let's see what that really means.

Twitter was on track for 200m users in 2011 [1]. Twitter was valued at 7.7b
dollars a few weeks back [2]. That's about $38.5 per user. Surely fewer than
half the users would pay for Twitter, which would mean that those paying must
be worth at least 77 dollars. At a discount rate of 15%, each of those paying
customers must yield 11.55 annually in free cash flow (i.e. after costs) to
justify Twitter's valuation.

Of course, Twitter could always find ways to extract money from the non-
payers, but yes, you bring up a great point: Is it reasonable to expect that
half the users will pay about $12 bucks a year on top of his fractional costs
to continue to use the service?

[1] [http://www.tgdaily.com/software-brief/52284-twitter-on-
pace-...](http://www.tgdaily.com/software-brief/52284-twitter-on-pace-to-
reach200-million-users-by-2011) [2]
[http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-7-7-billion_b6...](http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-7-7-billion_b6132)

~~~
tedunangst
Cool, real numbers. :) I think monetizing by any means half of all users is
very optimistic though. I have several accounts, long dormant, created as
jokes. If that's typical (perhaps not), you'd have to divide by at least five
or ten to get a real eyeball count.

~~~
alexgartrell
<http://twitter.com/#!/cooltedsays>

------
donnyg107
While this person would be willing to pay for twitter, giving a payable,
better option, would make much of the user base feel like they're paying for
something they should have and always have had for free. Blogging and
microblogging have appeal in their universal availability, don't they? Either
nobody would buy it, or everyone would and some twitter users not willing to
pay will lose loyalty to Twitter inc for asking them to pay for the product
which works. Creating pro accounts would be like handing out 600 sham-wows,
and informing everyone that the sham-wows do not absorb properly, but they can
pay for a working one. If the majority of the people liked it, why inform them
that the product they are holding is sub par? And if one were to argue that
this is a concern of the majority of users, then twitter would have to just
fix the problem to hold onto such a huge percentage of their user base, not
create fixed pro accounts and essentially ask people to leave if they're not
willing to pay. Either way, loyalty and new accounts would drop, which would
undoubtedly affect ad prices in the long term. Also, why the hell would
twitter spend time and money debugging and then apply the improvement to only
a select few users? They found the problems, why not just increase the comfort
and experience of their website for everyone and establish a larger and more
loyal user base? That'd kick up their ad revenue far more than any alienating
platinum account will. At this stage of the start up game, Twitter better
focus on creating the most loyal and comfortable user base they can, and work
on finding a stronger long term source of revenue. This would be a short term
pay off for twitter, and they're definitely working to break out of fad status
rather than make a quick buck. Twitter is the only product I've ever observed
that most celebrities and news stations use regularly that I can't convince
most of my friends to get into because "its stupid and pointless" (Besides
exploitation of public sympathy toward third world countries maybe. MAYBE.)
Until Twitter doesn't have a user base which loves them and general aggression
from everyone else (probably within the next few years), they can only debug
and look for sources of revenue which won't create discomfort.

(To the Y combinator people who read this as they evaluate my application: Hey
guys, Love your work, I got pretty into HN. I'd just like to mention that this
highly informed and apt internet user states that he gets all of his news from
Twitter right now. Just sayin'. Thanks, Donny P.s. I have a new twitter
account, and its MrGreenbergMD. I listed a different account on my
application.)

------
lloeki
Vote with your cash: buy a 3rd party Twitter client and skip the ads
altogether. Maybe Twitter will come back to their senses and provide an ad-
free, paid Tweetie^W Twitter app again.

------
MatthewPhillips
Bad idea for twitter. They can't get rich off a couple bucks a month for a
tiny segment of their user base, I doubt they can even break even.

Worse, having a pro account would cause ad prices to plummet. Who's going to
pay premium prices for ads when the people willing to spend money have opted
out of seeing them?

------
hoggle
I wouldn't mind to pay for a twitter pro account myself (although I'm on a
tight budget momentarily). How would this option hurt the current free
business plan? I think there is even a possibility that it would enhance the
perceived value not only with current users but also for would-be users. Could
it be that there is some kind of inferiority complex behind the lack of
decisiveness by twitter management? It's not 2007 anymore, a lot of people
"got it" till now. The problem isn't the monetization of the service which
could drive people away, it is the potential incremental death of the culture
which would. Twitter management just need to carefully observe successful
services like github or flickr (pre & shortly post yahoo) which were magnets
to mavens and spread from there. Examples for big mistakes in that regard
recently were Sony (killing Linux support for PS3), Nintendo (generally too
many "casual games" over the last couple of years, and now the 3DS region lock
- first on a Nintendo handheld). I know those companies are highly profitable
but I see their base crumbling already which always are the "power users". I
know talk is cheap and things are not that easy but don't be stupid, think
2011 already.

------
seanMeverett
I agree with everything you've stated. I'd pay just to remove the dickbar.

------
zi
I don't think that Twitter having any sort of paid service model would correct
any of the beef that the author has got with them. I use Twitter on a pretty
frequent basis just like the author claims, but have very few of the same
arguements. The "Who to follow" section for me is always fairly accurate,
suggesting individuals who are posting useful and cool information similar to
what I already read. I've had very few UI problems with either the web client
or the iPhone app. Kinda just sounds like the author either didn't really use
it enough to find it useful, or just griping about simple problems that all
social network sites will eventually face.

------
rishi
How much would you actually pay for twitter? $2/mo.?

Twitter is trying to make way more money per month from you via advertising.

------
ulugbek
Economics of startups and ad industry is a lot like that of farmers and corn.
Hard to find quality food without junk load of corn syrup in it, and farmers
are always poor. Ads, like corn will keep winning unless tech crowd is able to
think of equally innovative ways of monetizing their innovative ideas.

------
f1lt3r
What is the actual issue?

What is the technical problem that Twitter are actually facing? Does it simply
come down to something like processing power?

------
Nick-e
I will definitely be willing to trow 5 bucks a month for a PRO account that
will let me read other people private messages.

~~~
astrofinch
OK, maybe I was wrong and this article did do something.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2371530>

