[HN Gopher] Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
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Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ
Author : mikeevans
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-11-09 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.twitter.com)
| dang wrote:
| Past related threads:
|
| _Twitter confirms Twitter Blue_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27316115 - May 2021 (722
| comments)
|
| _Twitter 's subscription service might cost $3 per month_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27168200 - May 2021 (66
| comments)
| barnabee wrote:
| I pay for YouTube Premium and spend a lot more time on Twitter.
| I'd pay the same for ad free Twitter.
|
| As soon as Twitter Blue comes to the UK I'd pay for it even
| without it being totally ad free (while complaining about that).
| Between Tweetbot and comprehensive ad blocking I never see ads
| anyway and I'm happy to pay for something I get that much value
| from.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Is the WaPo subscription full or is it more like Apple News where
| you only get access to a couple headline articles and have to pay
| even more beyond news+ for full access?
|
| just looked it shows me $5.99 a month for wapo add on.
|
| If so might be worth it for me even though I don't use twitter.
| The rest I think are mostly available on news+
|
| Full bloomberg on apple news is $34.99 a month, though they do
| have more free articles than WaPo it seems and at least I can
| understand the value and niche of financial news not really worth
| reading about unless you're in finance.
|
| I don't think NyTimes is even an option anymore. They make enough
| profit on their walled garden seems they won't ever participate
| in this stuff again.
|
| The Apple News subscription I already pay for seems to be more
| for magazines. It used to have everything.
| gok wrote:
| Before anyone else waste their money on this: it doesn't make
| Twitter ad-free.
| oxymoran wrote:
| Just what the world needs, people Twittering harder.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _The Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA TODAY, The Atlantic,
| Reuters, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Insider and
| The Hollywood Reporter._
|
| Seems like a good way to push a ideological/political agenda,
| too.
| ushakov wrote:
| their TA primarily uses Twitter
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Does it also makes my likes private, and stop showing me
| suggested profiles, other people's likes, etc?
| nvr219 wrote:
| No you need to get Twitter Blue for Enterprise for that
| echelon wrote:
| Can they let us pay to remove all sponsored tweets? That's all I
| want. I'd gladly pay $10/mo.
|
| YouTube Red is the best product experience, and it's something I
| would pay to have elsewhere.
|
| I hate ads. I never buy products from ads. They just distract me.
|
| I'd pay $1000/yr for a completely ad-free Google. (No search
| result ads, no AMP, no "McDonalds" in Google Maps, ...)
| tootie wrote:
| Ad-free twitter doesn't seem like good value to me, but a
| completely ad-free Google sounds like a winner. I'm slightly
| terrified to hear what my net value to advertisers is to defray
| that lost profit for goog.
| tills13 wrote:
| Never? Or never actively. i.e. do you unknowingly buy a product
| at a later date because you at one point saw an ad for it.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| The "unknowingly" caveat makes that one a bit difficult to
| answer.
| [deleted]
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| This is actually something that seems pretty useful to me, and
| it's not outrageously priced. Good job.
| Andrex wrote:
| This idea would probably be a headache to implement, but has any
| service tried something like charging $1/$x for specific
| features? Feels like Twitter would be the prime candidate.
|
| Ad-free article access could be $1.
|
| """Editing""" tweets could be $1.
|
| Ad-free Twitter could be $4-5 (as that's what Twitter makes per
| US user per month via ads).
|
| Etc.
|
| IMO Patreon has already broken through the mental mode of "sign
| up for multiple sub-$5 things and have a single bill at the end
| of the month."
|
| Any big services out there doing a-la-carte premium features?
| notatoad wrote:
| strava (exercise tracking app) was doing it for a while, they
| had safety/training/metrics premium bundles each centered
| around a single standout feature at somewhere between $1 and $2
| each, but have since gone back to a single premium tier.
| perihelions wrote:
| This seems eerily similar to what people feared could happen to
| the web in the absence of net neutrality, only with the role of
| the ISP this time replaced by a platform content referrer. A
| multi-tiered web: premium lanes for corporate sponsors with money
| changing hands.
|
| > _" On iOS and desktop, Twitter Blue members will enjoy a fast-
| loading, ad-free reading experience when they visit many of their
| favorite news sites available in the US from Twitter, such as The
| Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, Reuters,
| The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Insider and The
| Hollywood Reporter."_
| bri3d wrote:
| I don't think the fear with network neutrality was ever the
| idea of a content aggregator buying content on behalf of a
| subscriber, was it?
|
| My understanding of the argument with network neutrality was
| that the combination of the network provider as a natural
| monopoly and the network provider's ability to render content
| inaccessible would result in a fragmented Internet - you can
| only run so many wires to a house, and if Provider B cut off
| Content A, you might not get Content A anymore.
|
| I don't see how this is the same thing.
| perihelions wrote:
| It's qualitatively different, but there's some similarities
| in appearances. The end-user viewpoint, if this trend grows,
| is that the majority of the internet could present as a set
| of subscription packages -- the more you buy, the more of the
| internet you can access, and at higher service levels.
| Because of these new financial incentives, previously open,
| ad-supported websites will shift to becoming closed,
| subscription services: as the friction for end-users to
| subscribe to things goes down (because of federation*), this
| becomes more common. The open web goes dark. Conversely,
| since this is also an income source for the
| platforms/referrers, they'll want to boost referrals to
| partnering companies higher than non-partners -- tiered
| service. It's true this isn't the hard severity of an ISP
| throttling, or cutting off, non-partnering websites; but it's
| a soft analogue of it.
|
| *(This friction can be zero. You needn't take any positive
| action to subscribe to the Nth website; rather the platforms
| you subscribe to abstract that away for you, as they monitor
| all your clicks and visits, and handle the income-splitting
| transparently behind the curtains. Basically the Spotify
| model, for the open WWW).
| peytoncasper wrote:
| How is this any different from any other sort of bundling done
| by Apple news or Google news?
|
| You're free to obtain a subscription to any of those media
| companies personally and simply follow the link without Twitter
| Blue.
|
| Most people likely aren't going to want to manage multiple
| subscriptions and will instead opt to not read the article. At
| least with Twitter Blue the user doesn't have to worry about
| multiple subscriptions and can simply read the story when they
| want to.
|
| Additionally, they now have a notification that indicates that
| they won't immediately hit a paywall when they click on the
| link.
|
| Ultimately, media companies need to be compensated, and this
| doesn't seem to be disadvantaging anyone...
| holler wrote:
| Yeah my first thought re: news/scroll was that it sounds
| exactly like Apple News.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Maybe they just mean that when you don't load all the ads,
| things can actually load pretty fast? 0:-)
| perihelions wrote:
| Yes, they're providing different quality experiences, but not
| actually throttling bits like in the net neutrality scenario.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Neat, you can pay for the experience you'd get for free with
| uBlock.
| wpietri wrote:
| I just signed up not because I'm particularly interested in the
| Twitter Blue features, but because I believe in paying for things
| I use. I also want Twitter (and other companies) to start
| reducing their dependency on advertising dollars, which come with
| a lot of perverse incentives.
|
| If people are looking for in on the web client, it's in the left
| menu under "More".l
| LordAtlas wrote:
| Not bad, Twitter product design team. They managed to take
| essential UX improvements and stick it behind a paid
| subscription.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| I first learned this technique from product managers in F2P
| games. If players are asking for a QoL improvement, make it a
| consumable item and sell it.
| missinfo wrote:
| Cheeky. Charging for a send tweet delay, so you have time to
| "undo" it.
| unangst wrote:
| I'm glad to support independent journalism while gaining ad-free
| access to quality content on a platform I frequent.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| Ideally you'd also get ad-free access to Twitter itself, which
| I would certainly consider paying for. Considering the annual
| per-user revenue is ~ 12USD [1], this seems like something that
| would be financially interesting to Twitter.
|
| [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/forecast-of-the-
| day%3A-twitt...
| johnnyo wrote:
| The average across all users is $12, but I suspect the
| average over people willing to pay for Blue is likely higher
| than that.
|
| It's can be a Catch-22 in some cases. The same people most
| willing to pay to opt-out are the ones most coveted by
| advertisers.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Some how I don't think the people that want to pay to get
| rid of ads are the ones clicking on them.
|
| Anecdotally someone I am close to doesn't seem to mind ads
| and regularly buys products from them, I block ads and
| rarely ever buy products from them. I'd pay for not being
| served ads in the first place
| renewiltord wrote:
| Anecdotally, I click ads and buy things from them all the
| time and I have all ad free subscriptions: YouTube,
| Netflix, Amazon, WSJ, Economist. Lots of stuff. Instagram
| doesn't have an ad free thing but I would have paid for
| it in the past. Not any more though.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| It's not necessarily about clicking the ad, it's also
| about brand awareness and the subconscious effect of
| having seen it.
|
| In the back of your head when you see the product the
| next time, you might think to yourself "I've seen this
| somewhere before... it's probably reputable." Or when
| you're in need of something, that brand's product might
| pop into your head sooner as something to assess.
| jsnell wrote:
| That's worldwide. Their revenue per US user from ads is
| $4/month. Selling an ad-free subscription for $3/month can't
| work for them just from those numbers, and it gets worse when
| you consider that Apple will be taking 30% of the latter but
| not the former.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| You can subscribe outside of the App Store, and I'd likely
| pay more than $4 a month to see only tweets, without ads.
| The only thing holding me back from paying for something
| like TweetBot is that Twitter has intentionally hobbled
| notifications for third-party apps.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| It can work it just wouldn't be profit maximizing in the
| short term
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Is this not covering promoted tweets? That's what I'd like to
| pay to not see.
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| Nope, it just provides access to articles without ads.
| Certainly has its uses if you use Twitter as a news
| aggregator, but it's not that useful for me.
| likpok wrote:
| Per international user is extremely misleading. Ad costs are
| wildly different based on geographic area, with the US being
| far higher.
|
| FB, for example, pulls 4-5x the ARPU for US users compared
| with international. I'd expect twitter to have a similar
| pattern (though it depends on what 'international' means:
| Europe is only half the US).
|
| The other issue with this is that the most engaged twitter
| users are going be the likeliest to sign up for a paid
| twitter service. These are _also_ going to be the people
| pulling the average up.
| acheron wrote:
| I love engaging with brands!
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| You want me to pay to join the toxic cesspool?
| woodpanel wrote:
| I'd find it funny to pay _and_ be cancelled off the toxic
| cesspool
| fortyseven wrote:
| Yes, you're very cool.
| nvr219 wrote:
| You can join for free and just pay to reduce the toxicity
| levels slightly.
| Bellend wrote:
| I have been an elite troll since the original doom deathmatch
| days. I have a true skillset in the arts. Twitter Blue is going
| to require some serious passive trolling but I have just taken
| the challenge. If I get banned after paying then I'll be the
| one that is foaming at the mouth with rage!
| tillinghast wrote:
| They want you to pay to join the toxic cesspool.
| manningthegoose wrote:
| As someone who was an initial skeptic when this was first
| announced, I really appreciate what twitter is trying to do with
| Blue, especially around direct payments to publishers. Any step
| to get the internet off of the ad-based data-harvesting revenue
| model is ultimately better for almost all parties.
| ghawk1ns wrote:
| Who said the data-harvesting would stop?
| manningthegoose wrote:
| You're right, it probably won't, at least not while it's
| still printing money for all the corporate entities involved.
| But it's my understanding that most of the data-harvesting
| tools in use today were originally created to enhance ad-
| targeting and drive up CPM. At the very least we can hope
| products like Blue might put a dent in this incentive
| structure.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Cable television was supposed to be a direct funded, ad
| free alternative to broadcast.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Something about a road being paved with good intentions
| feels appropriate here.
| vosper wrote:
| > At the very least we can hope products like Blue might
| put a dent in this incentive structure.
|
| I wonder if Twitter Blue customers will be omitted from the
| data stream that Twitter is selling to corporations and
| governments?
| otrahuevada wrote:
| Facebook makes maybe about 30USD a year from any given
| profile:
|
| > https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a212
| 721...
|
| Being relatively optimistic about Twitter's size, and
| assuming they're just fantastic at it, Twitter might make
| what, half of that? So for 3$ a month you need about half
| of the userbase to be on board for data munging to no
| longer make sense as a business model.
|
| I do wonder how high that mark is though, every SAAS I've
| worked with has been pay-to-use from the start, so this is
| not a metric I'm familiar with.
| tootie wrote:
| But, it's not direct payment to publishers. It's indirect via
| twitter. You can pay publishers directly already by buying
| subscriptions. Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels
| from twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional
| journalism.
|
| This is mostly my hot take just based on the press release, but
| color me dubious. Local news is struggling nationwide and this
| doesn't feel like a solution. It feels like silicon valley
| looking to increase profits for their shareholders to the
| detriment of the world.
| kooshball wrote:
| disagree with this point. I rather have more objective ads
| driven journalism than subscription "professional
| journalism". subscription are even more biased and create
| further silos for mis/information.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels from
| twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional journalism.
|
| Wouldn't payment integration with Twitter (if executed well)
| just make it easier for Twitter users to convert to paying
| the publisher after seeing the publisher's tweet? I don't see
| how it would _increase_ the incentive for a publisher to post
| clickbait tweets, except perhaps for publishers whose in-
| house payment flow is very poorly implemented or nonexistent.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > You can pay publishers directly already by buying
| subscriptions
|
| But that's not how most of us access news. We look at sources
| like Twitter, Hacker News, Facebook, Google News for links to
| articles.
|
| Subscribing to a single website doesn't work in this model.
| manningthegoose wrote:
| > Publishers angling for retweets to get nickels from
| twitter's algorithm is anathema to professional journalism.
|
| Isn't that what they're already doing? Except the payer is
| the advertiser instead of the platform itself via the
| subscriber.
| terr-dav wrote:
| Professional journalism has always had this problem to a
| degree; there's always been an advertiser or other funding
| source you don't want to piss off. Twitter just exacerbates
| this by rewarding the most sensational, attention-grabbing
| posts.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Editors writing clickbait headlines have been guilty of
| this for so, SO long. And it has gotten worse over time,
| even as the actual articles are increasingly behind
| paywalls. Complain about headlines which have almost no
| bearing on anything that could be called truth, and
| you'll be accused of not reading the article... as if
| that'd get the headline-writers off the hook.
| giga_chad wrote:
| Why would I pay publishers?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Unfortunately, I suspect $2.99 per month isn't sufficient to
| make these publishers whole with what they would have earned
| from the same users.
|
| Only a small fraction of twitter users will sign up, and the
| overlap with the kind of users likely to spend money on
| advertisers products will be big.
|
| I suspect this is true at nearly any price point. Even if it
| cost $50 per month, the tiny fraction of users who did sign up
| would be worth more than $50 in monthly ad revenue, since those
| are the kind of people who will subscribe to other high value
| services.
| smugglerFlynn wrote:
| I think it depends on what kind of product Twitter Blue would
| become. Getting all the publishers in one app, and getting
| "news reading experience" designed right, may attract users
| who were not paying anything to publishers before.
|
| I just wonder if getting into channel business, instead of
| building more open of a platform where publishers control the
| prices themselves, was the right move for Twitter. Time will
| tell.
| dralley wrote:
| As someone who used and appreciated Scroll (now Twitter Blue)
| for the same reasons, I'm pissed that they shut down the
| standalone service and locked it behind Twitter accounts.
|
| Canceled my subscription after that email went out. It's a
| shame. Kinda wish Mozilla had acquired it instead, although
| they don't have the leverage to promote it like Twitter does.
| [deleted]
| Taniwha wrote:
| Some profit taking there - US$2.99 is not NZ$4.49 more like $4.20
| - it's not like it costs extra money to NOT ship ads across the
| Pacific
| khc wrote:
| This came from an acquisition of scroll, which used to allow
| browsing partner websites without ads. Twitter Blue seems to
| require that we visit those sites from a tweet, which is a
| degraded functionality
| Andrex wrote:
| - Doesn't remove ads on Twitter itself
|
| - Is not compatible with _any_ news paywalls (they just strip ads
| out of already free-to-access articles)
|
| - Edit Tweet isn't Edit Tweet. It's an option to delay your
| tweets by 60 seconds. After that, you cannot Edit Tweet. "Slow
| Tweet" is more accurate but probably less marketable.
|
| Even if I were still using Twitter, and even though I support
| journalism when I can (paywalls for a few sites, etc.), I still
| wouldn't pay $3 for this.
|
| I think Twitter has a lot of work left to do on their business
| model. This move, IMO, is at least 5 years too late (if not
| 8-10). Considering Twitter has been unprofitable for most of its
| life, including in 2020[0], it's only _now_ that they 're
| thinking about alternatives to their ad network.
|
| 0. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/twitter-twtr-
| earnings-q1-202...
| captn3m0 wrote:
| No alt-text on screenshots, seriously twitter?
| koolba wrote:
| > In continuing our commitment to strengthen and support
| publishers and a free press, a portion of the revenue from
| Twitter Blue subscription fees goes directly to publishers within
| our network.
|
| I'm going to guess that I won't find any NY Post stories about
| Hunter Biden's infamous laptop on this filtered platform.
|
| Honestly this just sounds like a door fee for an echo chamber.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I find it quite astonishing that Twitter is gating UX
| improvements like Undo/Edit and Reader view behind a paywall --
| both are problems of their own doing!
|
| - Undo/Edit is just basic functionality being sold for money.
|
| - Reader View wouldn't be necessary if twitter threads weren't
| hot garbage to begin with.
|
| I really don't mind paying for a good product, and overall I like
| twitter the most out of all the other big social sites. However,
| what I've been seeing for years now is that they refuse to build
| the best product possible for most of their users, and they would
| rather stagnate than improve it "for free".
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