from Hacker News

Twitter Blue is now available in the US and NZ

by mikeevans on 11/9/21, 4:32 PM with 111 comments

• by manningthegoose on 11/9/21, 5:56 PM

  As someone who was an initial skeptic when this was first announced, I really appreciate what twitter is trying to do with Blue, especially around direct payments to publishers. Any step to get the internet off of the ad-based data-harvesting revenue model is ultimately better for almost all parties.

• by perihelions on 11/9/21, 6:13 PM

  This seems eerily similar to what people feared could happen to the web in the absence of net neutrality, only with the role of the ISP this time replaced by a platform content referrer. A multi-tiered web: premium lanes for corporate sponsors with money changing hands.

  >"On iOS and desktop, Twitter Blue members will enjoy a fast-loading, ad-free reading experience when they visit many of their favorite news sites available in the US from Twitter, such as The Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, Reuters, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Insider and The Hollywood Reporter."

• by LordAtlas on 11/9/21, 8:25 PM

  Not bad, Twitter product design team. They managed to take essential UX improvements and stick it behind a paid subscription.

• by dillondoyle on 11/9/21, 10:56 PM

  Is the WaPo subscription full or is it more like Apple News where you only get access to a couple headline articles and have to pay even more beyond news+ for full access?

  just looked it shows me $5.99 a month for wapo add on.

  If so might be worth it for me even though I don't use twitter. The rest I think are mostly available on news+

  Full bloomberg on apple news is $34.99 a month, though they do have more free articles than WaPo it seems and at least I can understand the value and niche of financial news not really worth reading about unless you're in finance.

  I don't think NyTimes is even an option anymore. They make enough profit on their walled garden seems they won't ever participate in this stuff again.

  The Apple News subscription I already pay for seems to be more for magazines. It used to have everything.

• by wpietri on 11/9/21, 9:07 PM

  I just signed up not because I'm particularly interested in the Twitter Blue features, but because I believe in paying for things I use. I also want Twitter (and other companies) to start reducing their dependency on advertising dollars, which come with a lot of perverse incentives.

  If people are looking for in on the web client, it's in the left menu under "More".l

• by unangst on 11/9/21, 5:55 PM

  I'm glad to support independent journalism while gaining ad-free access to quality content on a platform I frequent.

• by Andrex on 11/9/21, 7:47 PM

  - Doesn't remove ads on Twitter itself

  - Is not compatible with any news paywalls (they just strip ads out of already free-to-access articles)

  - Edit Tweet isn't Edit Tweet. It's an option to delay your tweets by 60 seconds. After that, you cannot Edit Tweet. "Slow Tweet" is more accurate but probably less marketable.

  Even if I were still using Twitter, and even though I support journalism when I can (paywalls for a few sites, etc.), I still wouldn't pay $3 for this.

  I think Twitter has a lot of work left to do on their business model. This move, IMO, is at least 5 years too late (if not 8-10). Considering Twitter has been unprofitable for most of its life, including in 2020[0], it's only now that they're thinking about alternatives to their ad network.

  0. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/twitter-twtr-earnings-q1-202...

• by echelon on 11/9/21, 6:12 PM

  Can they let us pay to remove all sponsored tweets? That's all I want. I'd gladly pay $10/mo.

  YouTube Red is the best product experience, and it's something I would pay to have elsewhere.

  I hate ads. I never buy products from ads. They just distract me.

  I'd pay $1000/yr for a completely ad-free Google. (No search result ads, no AMP, no "McDonalds" in Google Maps, ...)

• by dang on 11/9/21, 6:41 PM

  Past related threads:

  Twitter confirms Twitter Blue - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27316115 - May 2021 (722 comments)

  Twitter's subscription service might cost $3 per month - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27168200 - May 2021 (66 comments)

• by khc on 11/9/21, 6:35 PM

  This came from an acquisition of scroll, which used to allow browsing partner websites without ads. Twitter Blue seems to require that we visit those sites from a tweet, which is a degraded functionality

• by barnabee on 11/9/21, 9:21 PM

  I pay for YouTube Premium and spend a lot more time on Twitter. I’d pay the same for ad free Twitter.

  As soon as Twitter Blue comes to the UK I’d pay for it even without it being totally ad free (while complaining about that). Between Tweetbot and comprehensive ad blocking I never see ads anyway and I’m happy to pay for something I get that much value from.

• by gok on 11/9/21, 10:09 PM

  Before anyone else wastes their money on this: it doesn't make Twitter ad-free.

• by gjsman-1000 on 11/9/21, 6:33 PM

  You want me to pay to join the toxic cesspool?

• by Andrex on 11/9/21, 8:00 PM

  This idea would probably be a headache to implement, but has any service tried something like charging $1/$x for specific features? Feels like Twitter would be the prime candidate.

  Ad-free article access could be $1.

  """Editing""" tweets could be $1.

  Ad-free Twitter could be $4-5 (as that's what Twitter makes per US user per month via ads).

  Etc.

  IMO Patreon has already broken through the mental mode of "sign up for multiple sub-$5 things and have a single bill at the end of the month."

  Any big services out there doing a-la-carte premium features?

• by partiallypro on 11/10/21, 6:03 AM

  I signed up for it, and immediately cancelled. The ability to undo tweets is a bit of an annoyance after a while, and none of the features really justify the $3/mo price tag for me. If they charged me $3/mo to make my feed ad free, that would have been worth it. This...not so much.

• by groby_b on 11/10/21, 6:28 AM

  ... and still no edit feature.

  This might seem like a tweet soundbite,but it goes to the root of the problem - twitter develops its features in a vacuum and actively refuses to listen to its users.

  I'd also argue that they picked a horrible price point - it's too expensive for most twitter users, and too cheap for the ones willing to pay. The demographic of people willing to pay for twitter is not extremely price sensitive, and going for a lower price point will only insignificantly expand it. Going for a higher price point with more value add (remove "promoted tweets" garbage) would be significantly more appealing.

• by no_wizard on 11/10/21, 1:04 AM

  I'm very shocked that paying for twitter like this does not automatically get you verified.

  Is this not just listed as a feature? To be honest, I would pay 4.99 a month to get that blue check mark

• by paulpauper on 11/9/21, 9:03 PM

  The Washington Post, L.A. Times, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, Reuters, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Insider and The Hollywood Reporter.

  Seems like a good way to push a ideological/political agenda, too.

• by fideloper on 11/10/21, 2:26 AM

  I really want to like Twitter Blue. I'm having a hard time deciding if I'm cynical, or if it's Twitter product people being cynical:

  The changes we are paying for are client-side features only! There's no change to twitter.

  For example, you can't edit a tweet, you can only delay sending the tweet for a few seconds while you stare at the tweet!

• by ProfessorLayton on 11/9/21, 6:55 PM

  I find it quite astonishing that Twitter is gating UX improvements like Undo/Edit and Reader view behind a paywall — both are problems of their own doing!

  - Undo/Edit is just basic functionality being sold for money.

  - Reader View wouldn't be necessary if twitter threads weren't hot garbage to begin with.

  I really don't mind paying for a good product, and overall I like twitter the most out of all the other big social sites. However, what I've been seeing for years now is that they refuse to build the best product possible for most of their users, and they would rather stagnate than improve it "for free".

• by FalconSensei on 11/9/21, 6:46 PM

  Does it also makes my likes private, and stop showing me suggested profiles, other people's likes, etc?

• by PascLeRasc on 11/9/21, 6:30 PM

  This is actually something that seems pretty useful to me, and it's not outrageously priced. Good job.

• by thorgutierrez on 11/10/21, 1:47 AM

  I'd love to pay handsomely to remove ads from my Twitter feed, but Twitter Blue only remove ads from _other_ websites? please Twitter folks if you see this :pray:

• by diebeforei485 on 11/10/21, 4:46 AM

  I'm not sure who this is for. The features don't interest me much, and I use Twitter quite a bit (though mostly not to tweet things myself).

• by Taniwha on 11/9/21, 6:52 PM

  Some profit taking there - US$2.99 is not NZ$4.49 more like $4.20 - it's not like it costs extra money to NOT ship ads across the Pacific

• by oxymoran on 11/9/21, 6:27 PM

  Just what the world needs, people Twittering harder.

• by uncomputation on 11/10/21, 2:41 AM

  Anyone have a look at what Reader View looks like? That was the only screenshot they didn’t post and yet the only one I care about.

• by 0xdeadb00f on 11/10/21, 2:59 AM

  I havent heard of Blue... It looks almosy like an RSS reader in some of the screenshots.

• by analogdreams on 11/10/21, 12:00 AM

  underwhelming. now if they would roll out a feature that ensures i never reread a tweet and shows me a true 'done'/'inbox zero' after my feed has been consumed they might have something.

• by thrower123 on 11/9/21, 9:29 PM

  Neat, you can pay for the experience you'd get for free with uBlock.

• by foxhop on 11/9/21, 11:44 PM

  Twitters algo is broken and it's idea is old.

• by captn3m0 on 11/9/21, 6:53 PM

  No alt-text on screenshots, seriously twitter?

• by koolba on 11/9/21, 6:36 PM

  > In continuing our commitment to strengthen and support publishers and a free press, a portion of the revenue from Twitter Blue subscription fees goes directly to publishers within our network.

  I’m going to guess that I won’t find any NY Post stories about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop on this filtered platform.

  Honestly this just sounds like a door fee for an echo chamber.