• @[email protected]
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    202 years ago

    At the point if time, we’re just generating free traffic for him by continuously reminding they exist.

    Just let Twitter die.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    42 years ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    According to Bloomberg’s source who attended a Thursday call with X and debt holders that helped Musk finance the acquisition, the company is currently testing Basic, Standard, and Plus variations of the existing premium plan, which currently starts at $8 per month.

    However, according to details previously discovered in the X app, the entry-level Basic plan will not reduce the number of ads that users see on the platform, while the Standard tier will show half as many ads — one of the benefits that premium subscribers currently enjoy.

    X has not revealed when these new membership tiers will be rolled out in testing or general availability, or what additional benefits (blue check, edit, etc) each plan might include.

    During the call, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that the company’s advertising, data licensing, and subscription revenue is growing quarter-over-quarter “in the high single digits,” and repeated claims from last week’s Code event that around 90 percent of X’s top advertisers have returned to the platform.

    X’s finances have been a hot topic for discussion since Elon Musk purchased the company for $44 billion last year (it’s been valued at just a third of that price since).

    Musk previously announced plans to boost revenue and eradicate bots by moving to an entirely subscription-based service that would charge every user on the platform.


    The original article contains 392 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 44%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • katy ✨
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    1112 years ago

    this is basically the equivalent of “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”

  • dinckel
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    322 years ago

    Without the users, this platform has no value. No one is interested in it already, except for nazis, bigots, and crypto bros. Paying for this garbage makes no sense

    • Bipta
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      12 years ago

      Don’t forget how much Nazis enjoy supporting Nazis to own the non-Nazis.

        • dinckel
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          22 years ago

          They will be completely fine, if it were to disappear tomorrow. Pixiv/fanbox has strong creator support and tools

    • Izzy
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      42 years ago

      Those groups of people might be of the misunderstanding that people are still listening to them just because they are paying money.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      All they can do is take features away and charge users to put them back. I can’t wait until it dies.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 years ago

      Only reason I have twitter is there isn’t a bot feed to mastodon for the POTUS account. All my other feeds (nfl, ESPN, etc…) are being copied or are publishing directly there.

      Note, I don’t reply, like, comment or do anything to the feed, I just want to get the news “breaking” or otherwise

  • @[email protected]
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    492 years ago

    I can’t see why you’d pay for a service that still had ads? It’s why I’ve never gotten cable - if I’m paying, I don’t want ads.

      • Optional
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        42 years ago

        It’s the pinnacle of modern media. Why w- nevermind.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 years ago

        You look at it backwards. It’s ‘watch ads to avoid paying’.

        Paying is the default way to buy something.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          Well, it’s the default way of paying for physical objects and professional services.

          It hasn’t really been the default way of paying for online services.

          • @[email protected]
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            22 years ago

            That’s the problem if you want professional online services. Being the product should be the weird option.

      • @[email protected]
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        222 years ago

        Why? Ads are one method of payment, cash is another. The weird model is paying more to remove ads. There should just be two tiers, free with ads, or paid without ads. If t former doesn’t make sense, only offer the latter.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 years ago

          I want to see a service with ads that has a subscription and at the end of every month they distribute all ad revenue to the subscribers.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 years ago

          Ads are one method of payment, cash is another.

          This might be true if the cash payment was equal to the ad revenue per person, but it isn’t.

          Ad-revenue per person would be a few cents per month, but even if it were $1 per user month, paying $4 or whatever to remove the ads means the ads are punitive. Pay the subscription or we will drive you nuts with shitty ads.

          • @[email protected]
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            32 years ago

            And in that case you probably have an argument against using that service, or perhaps monopolistic practices if they are a natural monopoly. For example, if your energy company charged you $1k to remove ads on your meter, I would completely agree that it’s an abuse of their position because it’s unrealistic for you to switch to another provider and there’s no way the ads are saving you that much off your bill.

            My point is that ads should be allowed as a substitute for payment for services. Ad-free tiers should be an approximation of the cost to provide the service to you, with a reasonable amount of profit on top, as should the approximation of ad-revenue. In other words, those two numbers should be largely in-line with each other.

            The main issue I have with ad-supported services is that they’re frequently a complete violation of privacy. In order to increase the value per impression for ads, they need information about you to serve relevant ads, which means they’re likely selling your data to advertisers (or a third party that handles ad personalization). IMO, there should be strict laws around that form of data sharing since that can present a very real security risk to the customer. That’s why I’m interested in projects like Brave (just an example, I dislike Brave) that seek to provide ads without the personal data leakage (i.e. Brave could do the personalization inside the browser, and advertisers would only know how many impressions they got and the level of personalized matching for those impressions).

            I’m not against the idea of ad-supported tiers, but there should be strict rules surrounding them.

            • @[email protected]
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              32 years ago

              That’s fine, your position is reasonable and I can accept that.

              Over the years I’ve become more and more opposed to advertising of any form. It makes me very grumpy - probably unreasonably so.

              I understand that services need to make money but $10 / month for something like twitter just seems absurd to me.

              • @[email protected]
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                12 years ago

                Oh absolutely. I think Twitter should be free for personal use and funded by commercial entities that use it since their posts are essentially ads themselves.

                Basically, if you want to be authenticed (the blue check mark or similar), you should pay some recurring bill, like a payment per tweet or a monthly bulk cost. And in return, Twitter will periodically verify that you are you and notify you if your account is likely compromised. There can be different tiers for different types of users, from journalists to politicians to influencers.

                I don’t use Twitter currently, and I certainly won’t start when they introduce subscriptions.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 years ago

      Hulu has somehow gotten away with it from the start, plenty of people don’t seem to mind. In my mind, if the network with greys anatomy has it in their contract that they are exempt from ad-free, what’s stopping other companies from leveraging their shows for that sweet ad rev?

    • @[email protected]
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      162 years ago

      I prefer not using X at all, which is free and improves my mental health. That strategy worked well before Musk bought it too. I recommend trying it.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 years ago

        If it’s about my mental health it’s lemmy I need to quit. My twitter feed is entirely a positive one and I spend less than hour a week there anyways.

  • @[email protected]
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    212 years ago

    So it’ll end up being a platform of trolls and bigots just screaming into the void and paying for the privilege. What a fabulous idea.

  • Kofu
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    92 years ago

    For someone so clever he do make dumb decisions. I don’t have twitter anymore and people like me who left are the reason ad aren’t working.

    “Ahhh, I know. Memberships, Elon you are a god”.

    Only people like caturd are the type to buy stuff that gives them a fake sense of popularity.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 years ago

      The solution here is simple and it’s the same as every other freemium service: milk the whales and serve ads to the plebs. Ideas specific to Twitter:

      • animated avatars
      • post borders
      • badges
      • early access to new features
      • ad few tiers

      Iterate on that and you’ll reach profitability, assuming you start with a healthy userbase. The trick is to make them noticeable enough to stroke narcissists’ egos, but not so distracting that it turns into a clown show.

      Basically, something like Reddit Gold, but broken up into multiple pieces. Those who don’t care can ignore it, and those who do can pay out of nose for it.

      That Musk doesn’t see that just shows how clueless he is. He tried that with the blue check mark or whatever, but he completely changed the meaning behind it, which breaks a huge rule in UX, which is to not drastically change the meaning of existing functionality.

      • Kofu
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        52 years ago

        All I can say is. I agree exactly with your statement.

        Im from South Africa and that was my initial like for the guy (no other knowledge than that he was South African) but as I got to see him more and more, learn about his background, I realised that he is nothing more than the classic South african rich kid or poes as we call em in SA.

        Right around the point where he started calling people pedophiles for not letting him do some crazy thing, I saw that poes he always was, since then I have seen him become more and more of that poes.

        I hope everyday he loses everything.

        Poes is a vagina in South African Afrikaans but its used more of a diss than an the anatomical description, which would be a dis on vaginas at the comparison.

      • Kofu
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        42 years ago

        I will admit I was clueless to it until it was reported more and more. Its important that people understand that he is a very very rich charlatan.