I guess I need to update my angel investors pitch powerpoint to answer their "How do you intend to make money?" question.
"We'll charge users $3 a month to change the app colors and icon.".
"We'll charge users $3 a month to change the app colors and icon.".
Sure twitter may not do it client side and have special APIs etc, however ultimately they can also really do only limited time changes, other wise the tweets already read by others would start changing.
Of course they can still pull API access for violating ToS etc, however from technology context there is nothing they can do .
A company as huge as Twitter selling this as a subscription seems ridiculous to me. I don't use Twitter much, but IIRC aren't there a bunch of third party apps that have power user features like this already?
1. Hats and other cosmetic changes to weapons, with no buff.
The features that Twitter is advertising for its premium service all seem to be purely client-side, with the exception of the ‘edit’ button, but that doesn’t seem like a particularly compelling justification for a $3/mo subscription.
- Revue (email newsletter service similar to Substack)
- Scroll (subscription that shares revenue with news sites, and removes ads on said sites)
I highly doubt Twitter Blue will solely get you different app/icon colors, they're likely to roll those services into Blue.
This is somewhat similar to the Amazon Prime approach, where you pay for a premium version of a site/service, and get access to a portfolio of services like Prime Video, Music, 2 day shipping, etc.
Their aim seems to be "Twitter Blue is to consumption of online news as Amazon Prime is to shopping/media".
The way I see it, a subscription model = moving away from a system that incentivizes a platform to maximize engagement/ad views, and instead incentivizes the platform to provide a positive experience, so users stay subscribed.
/s