People might think he’s just a bad businessman, but I think they’re overlooking the fact that he’s an evil businessman relentlessly pursuing his dreams of dictatorship based off of actual dictatorships… that is also very bad at business.
I'm gonna call it. This is an (obvious) attempt to squeak in monetization for everyone on twitter that is as unobjectionable as possible, and once everyone's locked in the price will increase, and tiers will be introduced, etc etc., and it's going to work. Nobody still on twitter is gonna care about $1/year to keep access. They'll lap it up and thank Musk for the opportunity to be fleeced.
Musk could still fuck it up by being overly greedy and ramping up too much too fast like he tried to do last year (or this year? I've lost track), but I'd say this has reasonable odds of working out.
for everyone on twitter that is as unobjectionable as possible, and once everyone’s locked in the price will increase, and tiers will be introduced, etc etc., and it’s going to work.
I'm not so sure about that. The internet is littered with companies that gave away their product for free hoping users would pay for premium features. When they didn't and the companies then had to charge a minimum entry fee for everyone, people dropped the product. There's a barrier to putting in your credit card. Lots of people just aren't interested.
There are also a whole lot of governmental, health and official bodies where putting through an invoice is a real pain in the bum. It forces a decision whereas previously if had been a simple business as usual process
You're definitely right about that being the general result to these sorts of moves, but I don't think it'll apply as harshly to this situation. Like I said, anyone still on the site has already faced numerous insults and abuse at the hands of Musk. They want to be there despite all of that, or maybe even because of it. I do think a $1/month or something higher would be pretty likely to fail, but $1/year is such a low-level ask and will gently push the users there past the barrier to where the price can be raised higher later.
Honestly I want this covered. Elon is a toddler who's never been told "no" and he can't stand not having all the attention on him. As long as he's throwing his toys and sticking his fingers into light sockets, burning every bridge he's ever built bought to keep himself in the headlines, I don't mind spurring him on. Let everyone see how smart he is.
Unfortunately, if you're a U.S. taxpayer, you've given him a lot of your cents whether you want to or not in the form of subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX.
That's such a bizarre amount of money it's not enough to dissuade scammers and it's not really expensive enough for anyone to care about, except in principle.
I'm not really opposed to spending money to access social media in general (although even before Musk took over, Twitter in particular could get lost) but if I pay money they have to promise to not advertise at me, or sell my data, otherwise what am I paying for?
He doesn't need to charge anything to sell people's data though? They certainly already do that, no? If anything, this would just cause people to leave, meaning less data to sell.
For once, the money is genuinely not the point, from any point of view.
The stated purpose, and I think it will accomplish this, is that no one running a bot network will pay this for their bots, so spam reduction.
The likely ultimate purpose is to have the user’s payment info saved to reduce friction for giving Twitter money later on.
The problem though is that they’re adding this friction on to the beginning, so as a result I think the most prominent actual effect is going to be 80% of free users (real ones) are gonna kill it then and there.
Elon took Saudi money and money from who knows what other investors to kill Twitter. It’s all done deliberately and just before an American presidential election year.
wouldn't the smarter move be to keep it running but just really bias the fuck out of it next year? I swear people always want to read 3d chess into the mistakes of billionaires and dictators for some reason
He's going to learn what mobile games already learned, that the first transaction is the hardest no matter the cost. Also alienates like everyone without a bank account.
It's not even a price issue, it's a logistics issue. Also who knows if people will even trust him with their financial details.