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It's all a question of how much each of us is getting out of Twitter and what it's worth to us to continue using it.
25 bucks a year, okay I'd think about that but I'd have to as you said feel there was added value and the service was stable.
I'm a Twitter neophyte, but I am liking the platform immensely. I'm not sold yet though, they'd need to up the ante a little more if they want folks to pay. For what you get, sixty bucks a month...meh.
Cheers,
Margot
As for a paid service in general - this is a valid discussion. Would I pay $24.95 like I pay for using my flickr.com account, of course. I see the value there. Should there be added functionality? I'd say yes.
I should be able to have group mailing, multiple accounts, maybe even some incentives for recruiting new users -- but the idea that creating a revenue model over stability is Jason being a rabble-rouser - Pay no attention, move along, nothing to see there.
@jowyang has tried a couple times to say "see you on friendfeed" but not everyone has taken to it, although there are 464 people in the social media room. So maybe soon.
I use and enjoy Twitter because of the people with whom I interact. The service is a means, not an end. A year, year and a half ago, my unique set of friends/followers didn't exist. It'll take a lot less time to re-create that same network on a different service. And if the new service has some operational problems, will I be any worse off? No.
Twitter would do well to become a consistently reliable service unperturbed by usage, or IM clients, or database connections, or whatever happens to be their problem du jour. I'm with you, Jim. I might pay for added features, but reliability - basic functionality - that's part of a viable service's foundation, not a nice-to-have, and it's certainly not a trigger to get me to open my wallet.
Maria I can find PLENTY of things to distract me from work ;)
"Yah, but I'm saying, that TruCoat, you
don't get it, you get oxidation problems..."
"You're sitting there talking in circles
like we didn't go over this already."
The people that asked for less will not be happy with more.
Personally, I love Twitter. But I wouldn't pay for it. First off, as you said, it's not the only game in town.
The best thing about Twitter, though, is the people. I think a large number of people would leave Twitter if it delved into dollars. People leave = community falls apart. I fear it would become the place where the "bloggerati" converse, but many of us normal folks would go somewhere else. And suddenly, those bloggerati wouldn't have 10,000 followers, just those who stuck around.
One thing I love about Twitter is that it flattens everything - I can tweet at my favorite author or a Web 2.0 thought leader and actually get a response. Paying for Twitter would remove that.
Whether $60 or $250, my money is better spent on things like gas, food, and other day to day living expenses with costs that are rising daily.
Thanks for the post!
But I'm with you, nmj, it shouldn't be that I'm paying for the thing to work; it should work to start with. However, I think you're splitting hairs, here -- the fee would help ensure that it does stay up.
It just seems to me that any service as adored by its users as Twitter can put a price on its value without experiencing the level of migration that could potentially sink it altogether.
Bottom line. I love Netflix. That’s why I subscribe to it. There are other options. But I love Netflix. Even when I get a DVD in the mail that’s scratched and even when it happens more than once. I still love Netflix more than my other options. Same thing with Twitter. This is more about branding than people realize, I think.
There is no way that I will be paying for Twitter. I already have twhirl posting to both Pownce and Twitter at the same time. It would be an easy switch.
By the way: I stumbled you so expect some additional hits. Good work!
I think: Twitter team must dump Ruby on Rails and Oracle dB, go with a LAMP solution: Facebook on PHP with Zend dev framework pulls 60m + users trading pics n videos etc...?
Also make all these myriad 3rd party Twitter tool devs pay for API calls above a certain threshold, it's currently throttled to 30 per hour and the Older button is killed to lighten the load, but that is backward thinking
again, stubborn egos will be the ruin of all
The Blogger story is instructive; that system was never monetized in any meaningful way before Google bought it up. (and the Twitter history of intermittent downtime is eerily familiar to anyone who went through Blogger's early days).
http://brightkite.com/objects/1af4e0b1419fc3b18...
-gj
I'd certainly consider paying for features that would allow me to filter my contacts so that news feeds or posts by 3rd tier contacts don't dilute my feed. Perhaps Twitter should consider charging *gasp* news organizations or other commercial enterprises using it to channel their content, as opposed to charging "we the people." Anywho, just my 2 cents.
If I understand the way Twitter works, the system has to expend resources to deliver each Tweet to each of that person's followers. So if person A is following 10K people and person B is following 100, isn't person A putting much more strain on the system than person B? It seems to me that you help Twitter scale by redefining what's a reasonable number of people to follow/strain for one user to put on the system, and what's excessive. And then the excessive folks can reevaluate whether it's worth more to them to pare down their number of followers or pony up to keep using the service.
I mean, honestly, once you follow a certain number of people, are you really consuming a decent percentage of those messages? At a certain point, doesn't the signal turn to noise? And if the person following 10K people isn't getting much out of the Tweets, and Twitter's straining to serve them, then it seems like a no-brainer that those people either help to support Twitter (given that they're the ones causing the most strain on the system) or are otherwise provided an immediate incentive to cut their following list down to a more reasonable level for the overall good of all the users.
This isn't without precedent, either. Most shared web hosts will shut down an account that's using too much CPU if it's causing performance issues for the rest of the sites on that server. At that point, the account needs to either reduce its CPU requirements dramatically or pay more (usually significantly more) for a dedicated server.
One of the things I wonder about re: migration is what happens to the vast sea of support apps built up for Twitter...what a waste ! Maybe it's just the way it is in disposable economies but seems a shame re collective human brain power.
As far as it being a luxury & time waster, Twitter is certainly NOT that for me although the time it takes right now is daunting . This is only because I put an equal amount of time into on the ground work here with building itself etc.. & there are not enough hands & brains to go around. This would be true of any venture at start up though...it's demanding.
This $60 a month thing though...NO WAY. How would all of the non profits working with Twitter to network manage that particularly in the beginning stages when you need the open ability to brainstorm & may not have funds to go all over the world to conferences (or even want to re: CO2 footprint if there's another way ).
It's a fantastic networking tool partly because of its eclectic nature.
So, I just can't see why this brilliant community of developers can't fix Twitter ...is it that Twitter doesn't want the help ? Re: the contest BABT : Good thing , but I misunderstood slightly. Thought @mollywood was offering a crack team to actually go there and FIX IT ! That's the sense here : http://tinyurl.com/6q4osx
Thanks Jim, so much , for your effort here .
As others have pointed out, a Twitter Pro app that had serious features, like better ability to create and manage groups, the ability to have multiple Twitter IDs tied to a single email address, etc. Also, could charge for the ability to follow more than 1,000 people, etc. BUT, don't expect any of us to shell out $ for that Twitter Pro service until you've proven that you can keep the existing service up and running.
There are various ways to monetize Twitter (sponsorship, advertising, private label corporate intra-Twitter, etc) but asking people to pay so that it doesn't suck just isn't one of them.
Lately I've been feeling like I should just go back to LJ, honestly. Something I happily pay $25 a year for, has security options and filtering built in, allows multiple avatars and threaded conversations. Granted, I met a lot of folks through twitter I wouldn't have done so through LJ, but... now that I've met them, I wonder how many of them would truly follow me--wherever I might go.
I'd willingly pay $25 per year for "Twitter premium" -- would need to include additional services (over and above free accounts), and some semblance of improved performance.
Full disclosure: I <3 Twitter.
You've been using the car for free for 18 months, but it's a clunker. It started out okay, but it's got all kinds of issues and now doesn't even start on some days. About what you would expect from a free car. You know, the kind your grandpa lets you use when you first get your license. An 83 Saab wagon with a lot of rust and a turbo that's just one day away from costing you an arm and a leg to fix.
Twitter needs to cost somebody, somewhere at some point. Life continues to not be free no matter how much we want to will that to not be true.
It will be either paid accounts or ads, or an acquisition by a company with a real bottom line, as a loss leader.
Stability will come to the majority of users either way. If it doesn't, there will be no Twitter.
Perhaps, among all these discussions and others across the social media world, users desires and wants will help inform a business model Twitter can use, so that many of us can get we want: A highly functional, stable, adaptable and really cool tool to use at a low-cost or no cost.
Hey, to add to the growing pool of ideas, I'd pay for the ability to turn down the volume on certain Tweeps: people I like ... but not that much. :-)
Twitter is cool, twitter has the buzz, and Twitter will always be known as the the first Twitter-like service.
But their survival in current form is anything but a certainty. It seems very likely that they will make some move that will change the playground we enjoy... selling out to ads, a merger, or just breaking under the weight of 100 times the tweets we get today.
I love Twitter and would be willing to pay for pro services, but like Jim says, the current problems are much more than an issue of some users hitting it too much.
What I won't do is pay for a service that others don't use.
I evangelize for Twitter every day. Most don't get it until they have tried the service. I can't imagine telling one of them that they should pay anything for the current service. It will would take a lot of marketing to keep growing if this were a paid service. (think Vonage or Tivo).
I could live with a "limited-tweet" free option coupled with an "as-many-as-you-want" pro option with a fee of $25/year or less. But before I fork over the cash, they must prove the system is newly robust and won't be breaking down every week.
There aren't a lot of examples out there of items that are a) internet mass media (not niche); b) not 100% unique (there are other, even if lesser, options, that are free); and c) that were once free that have moved into a subscription model rswithout imploding.
Jim (I'm sure) and I both remember when our media companies thought "of course people will subscribe to items on our news organization's websites!" The masses will always go for the free option... and how many of them will just update their Facebook status more often if they didn't have Twitter.
Don't get me wrong. I love Twitter... and might pay a little for a pro (or ad free) option. But yeah, it's got to be ads or other revenue streams over subscriptions. And yeah. It's got to be reliable and more feature-y.
Why should Twitter be free? There are employees, server, bandwidth, SMS fees, lawyers... it boggles my mind that someone could consider them entitled to use Twitter and not participate in the costs in some way.
Now, $60/month sounds a little steep, and I'm against a use-based model. $5 or $10 a month per account seems perfectly reasonable with no extra features.
Twitter is a huge value add for my life. Clients, friends, advice, business networking, heck, even a boyfriend. If I did the math, I owe Twitter a heck of a lot more than $60/mo to break even.
I don't know if this was tossed out there, but why should I pay for using it more when I'm promoting it with every tweet I make when they are refusing Jason's money? If it's a software issue fix the software issue.
I don't think that's gonna solve the current issues. Until they fix it, I don't have the faith in the service enough to pay for it.
as you know Twitter is cool,I have to pay for twitter.but I hope I can have other more good choices.
The simple option is to let advertising take care of it. If advertising can't support twitter, it will fail. Plain and simple.
I hate to see my twitter turn into an ugly billboard, but hey, welcome to the real world.
This is a basic markeitng truism, but it's also backed up by a lot of research from the smart folks at HBS.
But sadly, that is not the case. It is but another social media site which is useful in forming communities and finding friends. There are always other communities to join, especially when it comes to forking out money.
As it is, many users are already ovewhelmed by social media sites so at most, it is one one less site to go.