Elon Musk has had a really bad 24 hours or so for a pair of reasons. First of all, Twitter had to admit via email that Twitter Circle Tweets had an issue that was reported by Tech Crunch back in April and seen by many was a bug:
“In April 2023, a security incident may have allowed users outside of your Twitter Circle to see tweets that should have otherwise been limited to the Circle to which you were posting,” the email said. Twitter claims that the bug has now been fixed, and that the team knows what caused it.
Now that’s nice and all. But it isn’t. Here’s the real world cost of this bug:
Twitter Circle has been buggy for months, which is concerning for a feature that people use to tweet things they don’t want to share with all of their followers. When we reported on the issue last month, numerous users had been tweeting that people outside of their Circle were liking their private tweets; one user even said that she posted nude photos on her Circle, which slipped through the cracks and surfaced for unintended eyes.
That doesn’t inspire confidence in the slightest. Nor does this:
In moments like these, I remember something that former Twitter Trust & Safety head Yoel Roth said shortly after leaving the company.
“If protected tweets stop working, run, because that’s a symptom that something is deeply wrong.”
I’m going to go with that and suggest that you run from Twitter. Speaking of running from Twitter, a reader pointed me to an article that shows that a significant number of people who subscribed to Twitter Blue in the early days of Elon Musk’s reign have cancelled their subscription:
Since Musk’s version of the subscription service launched last November, Twitter has only been able to convert around 640,000 Twitter users into paying Twitter Blue subscribers as of the end of April, as Mashable reported earlier this week.
While those numbers are lackluster, an even more telling detail about Twitter Blue is just how many of its earliest subscribers have canceled their subscriptions.
Out of about 150,000 early subscribers to Twitter Blue, just around 68,157 have stuck around and maintained a paid subscription as of April 30. Subscriptions are $8 per month – $11 on mobile.
The total early subscriber numbers are linked directly to internal leaks published(opens in a new tab) by the Washington Post last year showing that a total of 150,000 users originally signed up for Twitter Blue within just a few days of its launch in November. Twitter temporarily disabled new signups for about a month shortly after those users subscribed as a result of accounts signing up for Blue with the intent to impersonatemajor brands on the platform.
That means around 81,843 users, or 54.5 percent, of Twitter users who subscribed to Twitter Blue when it first launched in November are no longer subscribed to the service.
That’s really, really bad. The Mashable article says that having a 5.57% “churn” rate for subscription based businesses is considered “normal”. Which makes 54.5% insane. Clearly Elon has a big problem on his hands. And I believe that it’s due to the fact that the blue checkmark has gone from status symbol to a symbol that is seen as a negative. Thus I question how he can expect to make money from Twitter Blue as it increasingly seems that this is a product that nobody wants.
Sucks to be you Elon.
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This entry was posted on May 6, 2023 at 8:50 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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The Twitter Clown Show Continues With News That Twitter Admits To A Security Incident, While Data Indicates Twitter Blue Subscribers Aren’t Staying Subscribed
Elon Musk has had a really bad 24 hours or so for a pair of reasons. First of all, Twitter had to admit via email that Twitter Circle Tweets had an issue that was reported by Tech Crunch back in April and seen by many was a bug:
“In April 2023, a security incident may have allowed users outside of your Twitter Circle to see tweets that should have otherwise been limited to the Circle to which you were posting,” the email said. Twitter claims that the bug has now been fixed, and that the team knows what caused it.
Now that’s nice and all. But it isn’t. Here’s the real world cost of this bug:
Twitter Circle has been buggy for months, which is concerning for a feature that people use to tweet things they don’t want to share with all of their followers. When we reported on the issue last month, numerous users had been tweeting that people outside of their Circle were liking their private tweets; one user even said that she posted nude photos on her Circle, which slipped through the cracks and surfaced for unintended eyes.
That doesn’t inspire confidence in the slightest. Nor does this:
In moments like these, I remember something that former Twitter Trust & Safety head Yoel Roth said shortly after leaving the company.
“If protected tweets stop working, run, because that’s a symptom that something is deeply wrong.”
I’m going to go with that and suggest that you run from Twitter. Speaking of running from Twitter, a reader pointed me to an article that shows that a significant number of people who subscribed to Twitter Blue in the early days of Elon Musk’s reign have cancelled their subscription:
Since Musk’s version of the subscription service launched last November, Twitter has only been able to convert around 640,000 Twitter users into paying Twitter Blue subscribers as of the end of April, as Mashable reported earlier this week.
While those numbers are lackluster, an even more telling detail about Twitter Blue is just how many of its earliest subscribers have canceled their subscriptions.
Out of about 150,000 early subscribers to Twitter Blue, just around 68,157 have stuck around and maintained a paid subscription as of April 30. Subscriptions are $8 per month – $11 on mobile.
The total early subscriber numbers are linked directly to internal leaks published(opens in a new tab) by the Washington Post last year showing that a total of 150,000 users originally signed up for Twitter Blue within just a few days of its launch in November. Twitter temporarily disabled new signups for about a month shortly after those users subscribed as a result of accounts signing up for Blue with the intent to impersonatemajor brands on the platform.
That means around 81,843 users, or 54.5 percent, of Twitter users who subscribed to Twitter Blue when it first launched in November are no longer subscribed to the service.
That’s really, really bad. The Mashable article says that having a 5.57% “churn” rate for subscription based businesses is considered “normal”. Which makes 54.5% insane. Clearly Elon has a big problem on his hands. And I believe that it’s due to the fact that the blue checkmark has gone from status symbol to a symbol that is seen as a negative. Thus I question how he can expect to make money from Twitter Blue as it increasingly seems that this is a product that nobody wants.
Sucks to be you Elon.
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This entry was posted on May 6, 2023 at 8:50 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.