Twitter: Show Me Added Value if You Want Me to Pay
May 27, 2008
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
Let’s operate under the premise that Einstein was right about this. Why then, do I, and nearly everyone else on Twitter continue to keep coming back to this infuriatingly unstable platform to connect with our communities? It’s likely because, for now, that’s where the people are, and while most users are getting frustrated with nearly daily outages, no one is taking that first step toward migration. That seems to be the million dollar question - why do we keep coming back? To be more precise, it could soon become the $250 a year question if Jason Calacanis holds sway with the folks at Twitter. Recently there has been a chorus of people from Om Malik to Pat Phelan calling for some type of metered/pay service.
Om Malik’s post is essentially an indictment of the users, “extreme users” specifically. Let me get this straight… it’s the users “fault” that Twitter keeps going down?? This is how you want to introduce a pay/metered system on Twitter?? I have a difficult time reconciling Twitter’s desire to scale with imposing a fee structure on those who help drive growth in order to solve underlying technology issues that they didn’t anticipate. This smacks of hubris to me, the kind of hubris attendant in a brand that thinks they’re the only game in town (think cable company only with hipsters at the helm). This has already driven to a contest to build a better mousetrap and in the interem, I wonder if folks will simply migrate to an equally useful existing platform like Jaiku or Pownce. If Twitter offered added value and created REAL pro accounts, offering tools to organize friends, send messages to groups etc, then I’d consider paying.
Under the Om Malik plan I would pay around $60 a month. It’s important to note here that none of this discussion has come directly from the Twitter team themselves. But given the uniformity of the this pricing structure amongst the bloggerati, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if this turd in the pool has been floated with at least the implicit aknowledgement of Twitter and/or their investors. Now, $60 may not seem like much to some people. But let’s get real for a minute, as our buying power diminishes daily $60 is not insignificant to me. That’s a weeks worth of gas in my Honda Element. For that $60, all that is being currently discussed is platform stability.
Imagine buying a car, driving it off the lot only to find that the engine routinely dies. Imagine taking the car to get fixed over and over again until the dealer finally tells you he’ll fix it for good for an extra $5000. What chaps my hide a bit here is that the early adopters (I joined in Nov. 2006), helped grow Twitter’s mainstream adoption. Nearly everyone on the service has evangelized the platform by either word of mouth, blog posts, mainstream media mentions, or workplace use. In many respects they wouldn’t be where they are today without the very people that proposed fee plans would penalize. Perhaps if I try to glean as much potential financial/professional benefit from every Twitter post, I’ll soon grow more tiresome than I already am. Then people will drop me in droves leaving Twitter more affordable to me. That should make Twitter AWESOME! It’s the people that make Twitter what it is. It is CLEARLY not the platform in and of itself.
Over the weekend, I engaged in an ideological video tete a tete with Seesmic CEO Loic Lemeur on the topic of paying for Twitter. The videos are short, but it’s clear that I don’t come at this unemotionally.
Drops in ad spending forecasts for social networks are likely drivers in the push for pay-for-use and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this in places other than Twitter. Overall, I have no problem with paying for something I find useful, or that simplifies my life. I do take issue with the suggestion that Twitter hold stability for ransom. So to those forced with re-examining revenue models and premium” plans, I would humbly suggest creating an added value transaction, not penalizing the community that has helped build your brand.
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May 27th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Eh, Twitter is nice and I certainly enjoy using it, but I can certainly live without it. If I have to think about how much each post is costing me, or if I need to pay on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, I’ll say goodbye to Twitter.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
It’s bad enough that we’re “addicted” to the service, but the situation becomes much worse when payment is expected for access. I was also one of the early adopters — I’ve been on Twitter for over a year now and have close to 5,000 tweets. But does it fulfill a real NEED for me? No. It’s just another way for me to waste time and procrastinate when I should be doing something else. If I had to pay for it, I wouldn’t. And without Twitter, I’d probably get a lot more real work done.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I would pay if it was a nominal fee. Though I don’t pay for MySpace or YouTube or Blogger. Blogger is my number one traffic driver to my website. Why don’t they just add sidebar ads or ask for a small yearly fee? Sixty dollars a month is ridiculous, sixty dollars a year would even make me take a hike.
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
May 27th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Jason is full of junk if the idea is to pay for “uptime” or “stability.” The key element of the discussion should have little to do with this — the service should work, period.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
You’re right, it’s not about the technology but the people. I jumped over to friendfeed last week, but there are 240 people who I follow on Twitter and who are not on friendfeed. Only about 50 people in my network use both platforms. I’m having a hard time staying away from Twitter, and ignoring the rest of my network.
@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.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Recent Twitter outages, “recoveries” and throttled service levels show me two things: I can indeed live without Twitter, but like Melville’s Bartleby - I would prefer not to.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Okay so if I pay for stability, all those people who don’t pay get a different platform with current stability as it is? The logic just isn’t there. As you mentioned, I am all in favor of paying for extra features but I will NEVER lay out money without knowing what I am getting in the end. As I said earlier today, I pay Twitter by not complaining too much when the service doesn’t work.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
hey! great to see all of you guys here! Margot, feel free to call me anytime re. video stuff. Marcus, you and Margot both echo my pricepoint for an added value product of $25. I mean are we crazy here?
Maria I can find PLENTY of things to distract me from work
May 27th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
We certainly should not pay for twitter, but you get what you pay for. That said, while we do recognize the initial greatness of Twitter (all hail twitter), the question may not be, why don’t we leave but where do we go? And when we get there will we enjoy the same experience? I once asked twitterers what they’d like to add to twitter if they could and a roar came back declaring it’s uncluttered and uncomplicated use made it king. So will Pownce and Jaiku have too many features for twitter folks? Keep in mind the conversation between William H. Macy and a disgruntled customer in Fargo:
“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.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Twitter has admitted on their very own development blog that their architecture needs some serious re-working http://is.gd/kqV . Add to that the fact that Twitter has just received third-round financing from Spark Capital http://is.gd/k6a and I’m not feeling so sympathetic. Look, if they were bootstrapping operations then, maybe I might continue to cut them some slack. And, like you, I have no issues paying for added functionality as a part of their business model, like Flickr Pro. But, for Jason Calacanis or Om Malik to suggest paying for basic service, just shows how out of touch they are. To further suggest $60/month or $250/year as a fair price for two-tiered basic service betrays them as elitists.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
May 27th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Jim:
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!
May 27th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
I pay a small fee for Flickr Pro, I have paid for WordPress “pro” blogs, I pay for domain names and hosting, I pay for shareware once in a while. I might pay a small fee for Twitter, since it is my primary online social network. It bothers me mostly because I get so many other services like this (FriendFeed, Blogger, Slide.com, etc) for free — they’ve found other ways to monetize.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Take the twitter user base, multiply it by $5 a month, and you have a strong revenue stream for basic use. Perhaps layering the features by account level (i.e. one post per six hours for free users, x per hour for pro, unlimited for elite.) Then you get a revenue model to pay for the very, very needed upgrades they need
May 27th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
never rule anything out
May 27th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
May 27th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
[...] Twitter: Show Me Added Value if You Want Me to Pay (via Verge New Media) [...]
May 27th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I don’t see how, if someone will pay $15-20 a month for Netflix, they wouldn’t pay a similar subscription rate for Twitter. When a user locks into a subscription fee, it is a testament to the value of the service. The people who are more frequent users will opt to pay for it, and those who don’t find it as useful, won’t. There are literally dozens (maybe hundreds) of dead Twitter accounts out there. People who decided to check it out, started following a bunch of people, tweeted a few times and haven’t updated in a year. Aren’t these types of accounts STILL sucking up resources even though they are basically inactive? They’re still receiving tweets, but not being accessed regularly. A subscription service would fix this problem.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Great post.
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!
May 27th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Very nice unpacking of the issues, like the way you called the hubris of the blog egos, no one pays them serious attention anyway
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
May 27th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
[...] Jim had a thought-provoking post on this, all stirred up by Jason Calacanis. I posted a comment over on Jim’s blog, but then I started [...]
May 27th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Sell to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Comcast, NBC, CBS, Fox, BBC, or some other network.
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).
May 27th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I pay for Twitter everyday. Guess I fell for a Twitter phishing scam. If I stop paying, will Twitter work any better?
http://brightkite.com/objects/1af4e0b1419fc3b18451fc115b3e1056a7d3a386
-gj
May 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Just concurring with many folks here that basic reliability should be a given anymore with social media services, and that I’d never pay $60/month for twitter. That said, I’m not an uber user and don’t feel the need to be (I’d be in the $10/month category, but still — I get flickr pro for $25 a YEAR). Twitter’s been a fantastic way to keep up with my friends and journalism colleagues back in DC while away on fellowship… and to tap into an interesting group of new media thinkers/entrepreneurs/journalists whom I wouldn’t have found otherwise.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I agree that charging based on how many people follow you is unfair; you shouldn’t be charged for something that’s beyond your control. But why would charging for following above X number of people be a bad thing?
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
My thoughts are similar to many others… I enjoy using Twitter but I could live without it, I wouldn’t pay for it.
May 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I’m new to Twitter (4/30 as experiment re: arts np we’re building) and my experience has been truly great because of the people & ease of exchange although it’s still overwhelming me at the same time. I figure it’s like a bootcamp re:: social networking (& I’m no stranger to this/just cut out for a while from the party & now I’m back) that I’m undertaking & I’m trying out different new apps (like socialmedian, second brain , tumblr).
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 .
May 27th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Paying for uptime? Not going to happen. The Twitter team have to come up with a viable monetization model or else sell the technology to someone larger who can fund the infrastructure to make it workable.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Back when Livejournal offered more stable servers for those willing to shill out a bit for them, a lot of us did so. The other added value for us — more userpics, being able to voice post, etc. etc. — made it even more worth it.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Excellent and very thoughtful post!
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Twitter seems like a made-for-google platform to me. With Google’s analytics, they could drop in twitter-length text ads periodically that relate to the users’ hot topics. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s thought of this. But I frankly wouldn’t pay a whole lot for the service. Per messages is out completely, but I might pay a nominal annual fee for added functionality. The ad model seems like the most rational to me, though, and the best opportunity for Twitter.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
You didn’t pay for the car, Jim. The analogy is fundamentally wrong.
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Write or wrong, I’m not sure which Twitter is. I will say this, most of the people I know who are on Twitter are social media folks. They either work in or work with social media as an integral part of their jobs. And if a single one of those people can look their bosses in the face (or their investors) and say, “We don’t really need to make money,” I’d be shocked. So, why should Twitter be any different?
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.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Since most people have never used Twitter, I think it’s premature to talk about them having the critical mass tell us we have to put up with poor service.
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).
May 27th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I think it’s nutty too - I would pay, and believe in paying for, a “pro” service. One with added value. As much as I love this platform - it’s past time to get their house in order and figure out the business model. I wish that had been dome prior to a second round of funding.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:30 am
I adopted early. I think it was 2006 but pagination is broken so I can’t check this.
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.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Creating a subscription service for basic Twitter would be a disaster. Someone out there would undercut it, and kaboom. Is there a need for a Pro version that people would pay for? Maybe. But it would be interesting to see how many of our more casual followers would wander back to IM, email and other services without looking back.
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.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:17 am
[...] network sites into one. People want choices, and the sites that survive will be the ones with the highest value proposition for each audience that they cater [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 11:02 am
[...] Twitter: Show Me Added Value if You Want Me to Pay [via Zemanta] [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
[...] Twitter: Show Me Added Value if You Want Me to Pay :: Verge New Media - with all the talk about Twitter needing a business model and the idea of users paying for the service Jim Long takes a real good serious look at the idea. [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Strange how so many people on the Internet *expect* things to be free.
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.
May 28th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
[...] Duncan Riley said its time to move on, urging people to help FriendFeed kill Twitter. Yesterday Jim Long told us we were all crazy for going back after all of the [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
[...] Duncan Riley said its time to move on, urging people to help FriendFeed kill Twitter. Yesterday Jim Long told us we were all crazy for going back after all of the [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Yes, I’d pay for twitter, gladly, not $60 a month, as a small business owner I don’t think I could fit that in my budget quiet yet.
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.
May 31st, 2008 at 11:10 am
good post.
as you know Twitter is cool,I have to pay for twitter.but I hope I can have other more good choices.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:26 am
June 10th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
[...] suis pour ma part plutôt d’accord avec l’avis de Jim [...]
June 16th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Well put. A Skype-like model (free+premium options) might work for twitter, but only if the service adds some unique value-add features. It isn’t robust or deep enough as-is to warrant any kind of fee from its users.
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.
July 12th, 2008 at 8:23 am
What your post - and the ensuing comments - dramatically illustrate is that you can’t TAKE SOMETHING AWAY from customers, even non-paying “users” like we Tweeters - and not expect an uproar.
This is a basic markeitng truism, but it’s also backed up by a lot of research from the smart folks at HBS.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Wow… Twitter is just starting to get awesome. If they were to really do this they would lose out on finally mainstreaming their app! I sure do hope that they don’t do this. The day twitter charges is the day I stop using it and find another free service that does the same thing. There are too many services out there copycatting Twitter right now… it would just be dumb.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I’m so glad you got me up to speed on this. Just when I think I might finally have the whole Twitter thing down, this comes along. $60?! Now, in a recession?! I’m bookmarking your blog. It rocks!
August 14th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Payment for access is a decidedly ridiculous situation, be it $60 or $250. To incorporate a payment structure is assuming Twitter has reached a sufficiently dominant and indispensable position among users.
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.
August 25th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Great article.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Great Article.