People always do this. No you don't want to, don't try and be a User-Hero. And if for some insane reason you do want to, implementing and supporting it would cost more than they would ever take in revenue because no one else wants to pay apart from companies who then get preferential treatment.
I disagree - I've been requesting this on-and-off for years.
In the same way I passively pay Netflix to be able to stream movies, I'm happy to passively pay Twitter each month for the flow of conversation if it allows them to exist in the long-run, and get better.
If its viable for them to charge me $7 to $10 a month so I get an ad-free experience and they can wean off ads as main revenue source, then great. Sign me up.
Meh; user funding saved metafilter a couple years ago.
User supported ads free model certainly will generate more money per enrolled user than would have been made on advertising. The trick is to keep the costs of the program low, and avoid giving people bad incentives that break the store for non paying users. This isn't actually difficult... It's not like they need to set up payment systems from scratch anyways....
I'm paying for Github and I don't use any of the paid features. Why? Because I want their business to stay. The big difference is GH has a significantly better idea to make money with: paying for progressive, useful enhancements. I don't think you can do that on Twitter; maybe you could have, once. Like showing images in your stream could have been a paid addon. I have no idea if it would have worked or not, but nowadays, if they would want to make money like this, it's probably a paid "pro" account, a badge, practically, because of they go full pay-only, they will lose too many sources of sell-able data.
EDIT: read comment by mi100hael; apparently I need to follow news better, and I'm taking my praises back.
> I'm paying for Github and I don't use any of the paid features. Why? Because I want their business to stay.
lolwut. GitLab offers for free most of the stuff GitHub makes you pay for. And GitHub is run by a bunch of SJWs that have gone so far as to remove repos because a comment in the code used the word "retard." And despite being a platform for sharing source that hosts many prominent free software projects, the platform is 100% proprietary closed source. They offer absolutely nothing of value that can't be had better elsewhere.
I do. I thought about this for months. Always when I read tweets in the morning, seeing all the non-sense Ads non-relevant to my preferences in contrast of tweets and account I choses very precise. If this idea is nothing new, then pardon me. Anyway thanks.
For me, it's not about being a "user hero." It's because if I pay for an account, I become a customer, and not part of their product. It completely changes the relationship in a way that is more favorable to me, which is why I suspect they will never do it.
Music is universal, and enhances quality of life. If Twitter went away, I promise there would be no difference in quality of life. No one is going to pay for Twitter.
I'm surprised that Twitter hasn't added a cost for verification, considering these accounts have functionality that many of us don't have (i.e. ability to filter interactions, etc). Sure, people can opt to not pay for verification, but considering the value that top end users get from a presence on Twitter, it almost seems to be a no-brainer to add a verification charge.
My only worry for going ad-free for a fee is that it provides an argument for adverts to become even more of an inconvenience. If I could pay $5 a month to skip adverts, then what is to stop Twitter from throwing a ton of ads on their platform and then saying "if you don't like it, pay us".
In the first few years, twitter had a hard cap on the number of followers (I think it was like 10,000), and people with large audiences were forced to manage their followers.
I wondered if they could have started charging 'brands' and celebrities to break that barrier, but keep it free flowing for the hoipoloi like us.
Initially, it made sense, but nowadays I see loads of people that aren't really all that notable with verified status, namely people that work for the press in some way, or have had something notable happen to them. I know two people with verified status on Twitter. One is a writer for a trashy celebrity mag, and one is basically a Twitter loudmouth that was in the news recently. In my opinion, these people don't really need verification, as they're using Twitter as a medium to have conversations with everyone, whereas some notable people might want to manage who they speak to.
You could always have multiple paid levels. $10 a year if you're a business and you want to use Twitter as a customer service portal. $100 a year for the badge if you have over 10,000 followers. $1,000 a year if you want to filter who can tweet you.
I would absolutely pay for a twitter account. to remove ads but also support a viable path to stay independent and functional. Twitter does a huge amount of good in the world, and are important for freedom of ideas in many countries
Just to add to the brainstorm: they could charge users who have over, say, 5k followers a monthly fee to reach 100% of the audience instead of some arbitrary mix of them. The fee would increase with the # of followers.
It's in the spirit of, but not exactly like, Facebook charging businesses to reach more of their followers by "boosting" posts.
It would align the fees with the users who value most directly from using the service as a mass media broadcast device -- a lot of whom are businesses or quasi-businesses. They could waive fees for governments, educational institutions, non-profits, whatever.
If this were serious, it were a proposal to the shareholders. People at Twitter might like it to be a public utility, but shareholders will just laugh at you.
Readit News
In the same way I passively pay Netflix to be able to stream movies, I'm happy to passively pay Twitter each month for the flow of conversation if it allows them to exist in the long-run, and get better.
If its viable for them to charge me $7 to $10 a month so I get an ad-free experience and they can wean off ads as main revenue source, then great. Sign me up.
EDIT: read comment by mi100hael; apparently I need to follow news better, and I'm taking my praises back.
lolwut. GitLab offers for free most of the stuff GitHub makes you pay for. And GitHub is run by a bunch of SJWs that have gone so far as to remove repos because a comment in the code used the word "retard." And despite being a platform for sharing source that hosts many prominent free software projects, the platform is 100% proprietary closed source. They offer absolutely nothing of value that can't be had better elsewhere.
Now you get the privilege of paying for twitter and perhaps more followers too.
My only worry for going ad-free for a fee is that it provides an argument for adverts to become even more of an inconvenience. If I could pay $5 a month to skip adverts, then what is to stop Twitter from throwing a ton of ads on their platform and then saying "if you don't like it, pay us".
I wondered if they could have started charging 'brands' and celebrities to break that barrier, but keep it free flowing for the hoipoloi like us.
You could always have multiple paid levels. $10 a year if you're a business and you want to use Twitter as a customer service portal. $100 a year for the badge if you have over 10,000 followers. $1,000 a year if you want to filter who can tweet you.
It's in the spirit of, but not exactly like, Facebook charging businesses to reach more of their followers by "boosting" posts.
It would align the fees with the users who value most directly from using the service as a mass media broadcast device -- a lot of whom are businesses or quasi-businesses. They could waive fees for governments, educational institutions, non-profits, whatever.
I want to pay $3/month for twitter, but I don't think they'll ever add it.