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Comment by PaywallBuster | Hacker News Reader

Article doesn't say it cannot survive, simply its unable to achieve revenue targets [from investors].

And there are plenty of other ways to achieve revenue targets that's not advertising:

* Integration of memberships like Patreon - Twitter can essentially kill Patreon by building Patreon with better discovery and a non-4GB-memory-eating SPA.

* YouTube Premium, Discord Nitro-like premium memberships with extra features

* Awards like Reddit gold

* Reduce costs by laying off employees

* Focus on core investments and get rid of non-revenue generating projects

Advertising shouldn't be the only business model you embrace.

> And there are plenty of other ways to achieve revenue targets that's not advertising:

> * Reduce costs by laying off employees

> * Focus on core investments and get rid of non-revenue generating projects

How do those help your revenue?

> Advertising shouldn't be the only business model you embrace.

A fine point, but those last two ideas aren't business models. A business model needs to include money coming into the business. Stopping money from leaving is a different thing.

There's plenty of people who would pay for Twitter as a premium experience.

Twitter's problem is that the design and product team's egos wouldn't like the fact the main thing people would pay for is being able to opt out of their "improvements" to the service.

£4.99 a month for full API access for third party clients, plus two anonymously nominated other accounts (privacy protecting your alts). Total chronological order. Clients can opt out of all "conversation" UI improvements. Favourites can be turned back to stars. Users can pick the client that's best for them layout wise. A proper, useful search tool. A website with more that two tweets on screen on a 4K monitor. No algorithmic features whatsoever.

It would sell like gangbusters. It might also suggest to shareholders that their biggest problem was Twitter's employees.

> by building Patreon with [...] a non-4GB-memory-eating SPA

Twitter is the last company I would trust to deliver a product that's not a 4GB-memory-eating SPA. Their current web UI is a disaster in that regard.

How is their web UI a disaster? It's the only I've seen deliver a cohesive experience in all devices, mobile and desktop. One of the better crafted SPAs out there, actually.

Advertising pays significantly better than the other business models and scales significantly better. Reddit's revenue per user is less than 5% that of Twitter and most of that is still from ads.

So no, there's very very few ways to hit the sorts of revenue targets Twitter has without advertising.

> So no, there's very very few ways to hit the sorts of revenue targets Twitter has without advertising

That is very different from saying that a Twitter-like service can't be profitable without advertising.

I think they, and other social platforms should charge by number of followers an account has. Free for anyone with less than 100 followers, $10 a month for 1000, $100 a month for 10K followers, etc. (and the account owner sets the follower limit but can raise it to the next tier if they want)

This could set a really perverse incentive for people to start monetising their followers.

They are so successful in the journalism community, they could probably start patreon for journalists and get some good press for doing it.

Another route could be to start a newsletter platform since paid newsletters are getting so big.

They are the source for a lot of journalism..

A bit of focus on exclusives.. pay for them, vet the story and the person reporting, journalists would fall over themselves to subscribe to that.

Or maybe I read too much bbc

Substack and it’s perverse companion OnlyFans are good examples of this. Both are growing enormously right now as I imagine a lot of unemployed people are looking to monetize themselves directly.

plenty of other ways to achieve revenue targets that's not advertising

Charge per tweet for anyone with >1000 followers. Those people will gladly pay, they are addicted to the thrill of likes and retweets.

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