Micropayments fix this. Paying $5/mo is only for diehards with money to burn. If you follow dozens and dozens of content producers, $5/mo to each one is hundreds of dollars a month. If it was $0.50-$0.05, then it's a a couple hundred a year (at most). BTC's Lightning Network enables this.
I wonder about the tweeter with a lot of followers. How elastic is their demand? How valuable is their presence in drawing people to Twitter? Would an advertising model work better and Twitter treat these prominent tweeters more as partners?
I don't use Twitter and don't know much about it but my hunch is that charging some big users wouldn't bring in much money compared to advertising. I'd have to see some numbers to believe it.
And it seems a risk Musk can ill-afford at the moment given all the other Twitter turmoil.
Those specific proposals are a clever way to segment the market. I go on Twitter for a few minutes every couple of weeks so I would be content not having DM, having minimal number of followers, etc. But the journalists who live on it would need the other functionality and would be willing to pay for it. I heard many saying they would not pay for the blue check marks, but that seems like a service to other users more than to the check mark holder.
I don't subscribe to any Substacks. I don't have a Twitter account, though I read it. I never donate to political campaigns or causes.
There are only two exceptions to this. When the Daily Caller did an investigative report on my school district trans scandal that caused a board member to resign and helped get Glenn Youngkin elected, I subscribed for however long the initial period was. I probably would have continued subscribing if they hadn't sent me so many ugly spam emails that I unsubscribed in response.
The other was that I donated to the Chris Rufo type candidates in my local school board race. I would have liked to have donated my time even more but I had to care for my ailing father.
In other words, the only way I would ever part with my wallet is if I thought whatever was being done might have a real impact on my life.
If its just people talking on the internet, no matter how interesting their speech might be or how much better the world would be if people listened to them, my default assumption is that none of this chatter will effect the real world. It might be fun, and I probably waste too much time on it, but forking over $$$ if its not going to have an impact is no different then any other type of consumption good.
There is an important element to bear in mind: the true customer is the one who's paying. so for Twitter it is the advertiser primarily. what is challenging is to find the right balance because as Dave pointed out in his comment to be a client might mean spending 300-400 dollar a month in subscriptions. might be worth but requires careful selection.
'When you have a business on the Internet that involves distributing bits, as opposed to atoms, you have high fixed cost and low marginal cost. The marginal cost of serving the next customer with this essay is zero.'
The struggle is more complex than this, the marginal cost of serving a customer is close to zero but the marginal cost of attracting that customer can be high. Platforms are attractive because lots of people are on them, ie lots of content. If you have the content then people will come, but people don't want to put content up unless people are there. Someone has to take a loss upfront to build the network.
Micropayments fix this. Paying $5/mo is only for diehards with money to burn. If you follow dozens and dozens of content producers, $5/mo to each one is hundreds of dollars a month. If it was $0.50-$0.05, then it's a a couple hundred a year (at most). BTC's Lightning Network enables this.
Based Money lays out the fix for microblogging platforms like Twitter https://basedmoney.substack.com/p/how-to-fully-understand-cryptocurrency
I wonder about the tweeter with a lot of followers. How elastic is their demand? How valuable is their presence in drawing people to Twitter? Would an advertising model work better and Twitter treat these prominent tweeters more as partners?
I don't use Twitter and don't know much about it but my hunch is that charging some big users wouldn't bring in much money compared to advertising. I'd have to see some numbers to believe it.
And it seems a risk Musk can ill-afford at the moment given all the other Twitter turmoil.
Those specific proposals are a clever way to segment the market. I go on Twitter for a few minutes every couple of weeks so I would be content not having DM, having minimal number of followers, etc. But the journalists who live on it would need the other functionality and would be willing to pay for it. I heard many saying they would not pay for the blue check marks, but that seems like a service to other users more than to the check mark holder.
I don't subscribe to any Substacks. I don't have a Twitter account, though I read it. I never donate to political campaigns or causes.
There are only two exceptions to this. When the Daily Caller did an investigative report on my school district trans scandal that caused a board member to resign and helped get Glenn Youngkin elected, I subscribed for however long the initial period was. I probably would have continued subscribing if they hadn't sent me so many ugly spam emails that I unsubscribed in response.
The other was that I donated to the Chris Rufo type candidates in my local school board race. I would have liked to have donated my time even more but I had to care for my ailing father.
In other words, the only way I would ever part with my wallet is if I thought whatever was being done might have a real impact on my life.
If its just people talking on the internet, no matter how interesting their speech might be or how much better the world would be if people listened to them, my default assumption is that none of this chatter will effect the real world. It might be fun, and I probably waste too much time on it, but forking over $$$ if its not going to have an impact is no different then any other type of consumption good.
There is an important element to bear in mind: the true customer is the one who's paying. so for Twitter it is the advertiser primarily. what is challenging is to find the right balance because as Dave pointed out in his comment to be a client might mean spending 300-400 dollar a month in subscriptions. might be worth but requires careful selection.
'When you have a business on the Internet that involves distributing bits, as opposed to atoms, you have high fixed cost and low marginal cost. The marginal cost of serving the next customer with this essay is zero.'
The struggle is more complex than this, the marginal cost of serving a customer is close to zero but the marginal cost of attracting that customer can be high. Platforms are attractive because lots of people are on them, ie lots of content. If you have the content then people will come, but people don't want to put content up unless people are there. Someone has to take a loss upfront to build the network.
Speaking as someone with neither expertise nor business sense, this seems like a smart solution.