X will begin charging new users $1 a year::X owner Elon Musk has long floated the idea of charging users $1 for the platform. Now, the team is moving the idea into production.
I think Twitter is just the start. Big tech had always placed user growth as the highest priority to accelerate growth. They assumed that once they monopolize the market, they will be free to do with said market whatever they want due to alternatives being nonexistent but are quickly learning that is not the case. Ads and sale of user data can only earn you so much.
Meta will follow suit within a year, I’ll set a reminder right now to see if my prediction was right.
Media business will start changing for subscriptions
News, but not technology.
“New users.” Ha.
Why would you make it recurring, if it’s to fight bots? A sign up fee of 5 bucks would make more sense.
But it’s not about bots. It’s about extracting whatever cash he can.
Elon whining about bots is the same as trump whining about fake news.
He’s just trying to use it as a carte blanche to do what he likes without having to explain himself
Because if you make it recurring you have justification to keep a card on file. Which means a good percentage of people will set it up and then forget about it. And if it remains yearly it’ll happen infrequently enough that people probably won’t bother cancelling it. Even if the price goes up.
In New Zealand and the Philippines only, right?
My theory is he’s literally trying to kill Twitter. He blustered about buying Twitter as a brag with no actual intention to go through with it. And then they took him seriously and forced him to make good on it. Now he’s pissed he was compelled to take ownership of it and still doesn’t actually want anything to do with it. So he’s putting it out of his misery as quickly as possible. Meanwhile his hubris is blinding him to the ensuing shitstorm of shareholder litigation he’s about to face.
My theory is that announcing that this will apply for new accounts and that they are now testing it in New Zealand and Philippines he hopes that people that don’t have Twitter account now will create one.
This always sounds nice, except that he could just fire everyone, turn off the servers and close the offices. That would kill Twitter instantaneously. No need to bleed money. Musk genuinely believes what he says and thinks that what he does is the correct thing to do, completely unironically and without any shred of self-awareness. He is just not a very clever man. He did similar hi-jinks when he was the CEO of PayPal, except there were other powerful people there smart enough to fire him so he didn’t destroy the company. Same with Tesla and SpaceX, there are other adults in the room that can put him on his place or distract him with shiny toys so he doesn’t break anything important. But with Twitter, there is no safety net, this is pure unadulterated, unfiltered, unhinged Muskrat brain juice.
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Has he put on a little weight?
He has - a recent article last month had an image of him and I scrolled by thinking “lol that guy looks like Elon Musk” - but he’s gained weight and his facial hair is pretty disgusting. 🧔♂️