The IT Nerd

I really get the sense that Elon’s product strategy with Twitter is to keep throwing stuff at the metaphorical wall and hope and pray that something sticks so that he can make money. And I say that based on the fact that in the last few hours, Elon has made two changes. Let’s start with the Super Follow feature. To be frank, it’s never been that popular amongst creators. But Elon hopes by rebranding it Twitter Subscriptions, it will become popular. And Elon has quite the deal for you if you sign up:

For the next 12 months, Twitter will keep none of the money.

You will receive whatever money we receive, so that’s 70% for subscriptions on iOS & Android (they charge 30%) and ~92% on web (could be better, depending on payment processor).

After first year, iOS & Android fees…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2023

Let’s see how long it takes before he starts taking a cut of the revenue because he is so desperate for Twitter to make money.

I’ll point out one other thing. As is typical for anything that Elon does with Twitter, this change is a bit of a train wreck next to a dumpster fire. Apparently this was actually rolled out months ago, and Elon for whatever reason seems to be bringing it to light now. And apparently people have applied for this months ago when it first surfaced…. But:

It has been broken for a long time. My application is “In Review” since a couple of months ago. pic.twitter.com/Olk9bywYSe

— Mahdi (@mahdi) April 13, 2023

Another #Fail for Elon? I think so.

Let’s move on to his other brainwave shall we? And that’s Twitter Blue. He’s tweaked the offering:

We’re making improvements to the writing and reading experience on Twitter! Starting today, Twitter now supports Tweets up to 10,000 characters in length, with bold and italic text formatting.

Sign up for Twitter Blue to access these new features, and apply to enable…

— Write (@Write) April 14, 2023

Keep in mind that Twitter has already increased the character count in Tweets for Twitter Blue subscribers to 4000 and very few people have signed up. And to be honest, I for one would not read a Tweet that long. Thus I have to wonder what effect will adding 10000 characters along with bold and italic formatting will do. Likely nothing from where I sit. That’s on top of the fact that this isn’t going to be a mobile friendly experience which will disincentivize people from using this feature as nobody is going to type out 10000 characters on their iPhone. As always, I am free to be surprised, but I suspect I won’t be. And it looks like I am not the only person who feels that way:

oh joy, even longer tweets to never read and immediately block

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) April 14, 2023

bookmark this photo, you're going to need it. pic.twitter.com/tsnChgiqhJ

— Pete Halvorsen (@petehalvorsen) April 14, 2023

10,000?!? That’s like a whole Substack 😁

— The Best of Live Audio (@BestLiveAudio) April 14, 2023

Great news! Now you can write an entire novel on Twitter instead of just a novella. But let's be honest, who has the attention span for that? Sign up for Twitter Blue and try not to bankrupt yourself with all the new ways to waste time on this app.

— Carlos Gil (@carlosgil83) April 14, 2023

And speaking of that mobile friendly experience, none of this works on mobile apparently:

It should work via web interface

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2023

Another #Fail for Elon. The latest of many #Fails for Elon. I wonder how his rather fragile ego survives all this failure with Twitter?

This entry was posted on April 14, 2023 at 8:17 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.