[BigB]

Just curious...

Any T-BHPian with a Blue Tick?

[whitewing]

Will be interesting to watch how the "Chief Twit" navigates the moderation of content while ensuring the platform does not degrade its content further.
If the content degradation continues, for sure the advertising revenues will decrease.
There's a reason 4Chan is not big on revenue generation, although some boards are brilliant.

Quoting from a recent study https://www.montclair.edu/school-of-...isition-1.pdf?

the seven-day average of Tweets using the studied hate terms prior to Musk’s acquisition was never higher than 84 times per hour.
From midnight on October 28 to 12 noon, however, hate terms were Tweeted some 4,778 times. Calculation of potential reach (i.e., the potential number of times a term posted in Twitter could have been viewed) was in excess of three million. As such, this research suggests that there was an immediate, visible, and measurable spike in hate terms on Twitter after Musk took over as CEO.

[gupta_chd]

Originally Posted by binand

I will be astonished if even 5% of the Twitter users (300 million as you say) choose to pay $8/month for this blue tick.

In that case, 5% subscriptions would mean about $1.5B additional revenue per year. Move could be worth then.

[ajayc123]

There are about 300000 blue ticked ones at present, even some of them are reluctant to pay.

Look at this one.

Musk was reportedly planning to offer a premium subscription service for $20 a month, but he appeared to spontaneously scrap those plans during an exchange with horror fiction author Stephen King, who said Twitter "should pay me."

Link

[whitewing]

Originally Posted by gupta_chd

In that case, 5% subscriptions would mean about $1.5B additional revenue per year. Move could be worth then.

Twitter currently generates its revenue from Ads and selling data to 3rd parties.
Of the approx 5Billion $ revenue, ~4.5 Billion came from Advertising IIRC.

Now, if the privilege of the 8$ fee includes an Ad free experience, this will take away a lucrative target, from scope. Consequently the ad revenue also should (logically) drop.
In addition if the moderation (or lack of it) leads to unwanted focus on the advertisers, that revenue will drop precipitously.

I also read an article where it was reported that car makers are now re-evaluating their advertising approach on twitter, since Musk also owns their direct competitor - Tesla.

Even if 5% of user base would pay 8$ a month, the firm would still end up generating lesser revenues. Although it may return to profit due to other cost cutting measures like job cuts (50 to 75% of workforce doing the rounds !).

[mayukh42]

Originally Posted by whitewing

There's a reason 4Chan is not big on revenue generation, although some boards are brilliant

I think the fundamental problem we see all around is that we design a "social" network for "profit". Those 2 things do not go well together.

Youtube's 8 min videos are not long enough to be thorough and short enough to wait and not skip. Result? 8 mins of your time wasted because if you are really interested, you need to watch more videos. Now, should our video watching efficiency depend on what is best for advertisers?

Thinking of every tech innovation or company from the perspective of ad revenue is what is killing them or sending them south at least in terms of quality. I for one, actually think it is better to pay for the service than to get it free with ads. If all users pay, lets say $5 per year (blue ticks can pay $100), that'll keep ads out and make Twitter a town square like we want.

Imagine a real life town square where entry is restricted because some sponsor has a political bias or wants to influence an election so that his bills are passed sooner than his competition. It ceases to be a town square.

As the discussion was in the mobiles thread, the tech landscape is not really being sustainable based on what they did for the last 10 years. This extends to software as well, especially social networks (e.g. Meta and its audacious wastage of billions in the name of creating virtual ad space). And all this is only because they are trying to make profit while keeping things free/ lower cost than they should be.

Now, it is not possible to overnight change from free to paid for everything. At least the platforms should dilute the "personalisation" algorithms and show ads to everyone, even if not relevant to 99% - to think of it, that is the efficiency of physical billboards, and I think if we have the data, is not far from the probability of a click being converted to sale.

[Electromotive]

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[gupta_chd]

Originally Posted by whitewing

Twitter currently generates its revenue from Ads and selling data to 3rd parties.
Of the approx 5Billion $ revenue, ~4.5 Billion came from Advertising IIRC.

Now, if the privilege of the 8$ fee includes an Ad free experience, this will take away a lucrative target, from scope. Consequently the ad revenue also should (logically) drop.

Revenue may drop. There is every possibility out there. But there is no ad free experience promised even with $8 fees. It will only be half the ads as compared to other users.

Originally Posted by ajayc123

There are about 300000 blue ticked ones at present, even some of them are reluctant to pay.

Look at this one.



Link

Musk has proposed to make it as a subscription service. It means anybody and everybody willing to pay can get a blue tick, with the hope that number of blue tick accounts will increase substantially.

[superbad]

Originally Posted by Samurai

P. Parag & Co won pennies while losing the dollars, that doesn't make them winners.

This is not about money, but power. Those who haven't experienced executive power over others may not understand this fully. I said this back in April in the same thread.

Parag will reportedly get severances to the tune of $50 million plus millions in stock buyback. Beg your pardon but that cannot be termed as pennies.
Being a corporate CEO, I doubt he cares about power, freedom of expression, ideology etc. His job is to deliver maximum monies to his stakeholders (including himself). He seems to have succeeded in this regard. Further, it's easy for him to be head hunted towards greener pastures.

[chaudh2s]

Happily neither a twitter (or for that matter nor an instagram user). Saves me from the useless small talk outside my circle of influence.

[the_skyliner]

Originally Posted by gupta_chd

It means anybody and everybody willing to pay can get a blue tick, with the hope that number of blue tick accounts will increase substantially.

Won't that defy the whole purpose of the "blue-tick" rendering it useless more or less? If something can be bought for $8 instead of earning it through meaningful posts or one's reputation or stature in the society then it sure to lose it's uniqueness, IMO.

Those users who already have a blue-tick might be tempted to pay and keep the status but once Twitter starts handing it out to "anyone" willing to pay $8 then probably it will cease being a status symbol.

Anything more than free of cost is too expensive in the world of social media or dare I say in the internet world in general. Unless of course one wishes to use it for business purposes.

Originally Posted by superbad

Being a corporate CEO, I doubt he cares about power, freedom of expression, ideology etc. His job is to deliver maximum monies to his stakeholders (including himself).

True that.

[binand]

Originally Posted by gupta_chd

In that case, 5% subscriptions would mean about $1.5B additional revenue per year. Move could be worth then.

Well, Twitter has taken on additional debt to the tune of $13B. This hypothetical $1.5B additional revenue might not be even sufficient to cover the interest payment on that. Always supposing this entire amount will materialise and won't cut into their other revenue streams.

(Note that he can't price it at $8/month worldwide; it has to be proportionate to purchasing power).

Here is how he has funded it as per a report I read on Al Jazeera: $27B of his own money, $5B of money from others like Larry Ellison etc., and $13B of debt from a consortium of banks. Not sure if the cost of the 9.6% he owned pre-April is factored into this.

Edit: Full disclosure - he is Musk, the world's richest man and I'm an average Bangalore techie. Obviously there are thoughts in his mind and events happening that he controls of which I have no clue. Maybe he has a grand plan and I'll be eating my words 2-3 years from now.

[Kapany]

Really interesting to see some of the responses here.


I feel Elon has bitten off more than he could chew but if he manages to turn this around and make twitter profitable I will gladly join the (unexpected) legions of Elon fanboys on this platform ��

[whitewing]

Originally Posted by mayukh42

I think the fundamental problem we see all around is that we design a "social" network for "profit". Those 2 things do not go well together.

I completely agree with the broad point you make, I for one would gladly pay a small sum to keep my personal data to myself.
Unfortunately I feel that the the genie is already out of the bottle and the current business model based out of monetizing user data has become rather entrenched.
This is also one of the reasons, I am not active on any of the popular social media forums.

Originally Posted by mayukh42

Imagine a real life town square where entry is restricted because some sponsor has a political bias or wants to influence an election so that his bills are passed sooner than his competition. It ceases to be a town square.
..

This is the dilemma of free speech.
Get a bunch of people to discuss any topic under the sun, I can bet that it will degenerates into a shouting match based on one's biases and affiliations. Just look at the increase in hate speech reported around the time of the twitter take over -(see my earlier post (Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for US$ 41 billion. EDIT: Acquires Twitter for $44 billion) ). Only reinforces the need for some form of moderation to prevent abuse of a platform.
This very forum is a good example of why it still is a place where one can exchange and get different viewpoints, without the discussions turning personal. The moderation will not be perfect, but helps maintain the hygiene.

[mayukh42]

Originally Posted by whitewing

Only reinforces the need for some form of moderation to prevent abuse of a platform.
This very forum is a good example of why it still is a place where one can exchange and get different viewpoints, without the discussions turning personal.

If moderation is only to prevent abuse of the platform, it is justified. But moderation masked for intolerance is not. What Twitter had become was a platform for only one side of the spectrum, where if you even "glanced at" the other side without actually being there, you'd be whacked.

This might be at par with certain ideologies where they do not want people to hear the other side, and paint you as the devil incarnate if you tried to. That should stop in the new Twitter (hopefully that is the balance Musk was talking about).

Moderation for effective use of a platform is very much required, but the key is to maintain a balance so that it does not acquire any color.