this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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If you're paying several thousands a month for social media managers, paying an extra 500 a month is not that big of a deal.
That's only massive companies. There aren't that many of them. $500/month from a couple hundred big enterprise clients won't pay the bills.
You need medium sized businesses to pay to use it.
And even massive companies won't pay $500/month when you completely remove the userbase by making it impossible to use without paying. $5/year would remove 99% of the userbase overnight.
You're convoluting several things here.
First of all, even medium sized businesses often enough employ several people as their social media managers, not all in full-time, but there's already a big cost associated with just "being there". Then, you are severely underestimating what businesses usually pay for in support roles. Databases easily cost six figures in licenses per year, for example. All the MS365 stuff isn't free either. 500€ is a drop in the bucket - especially for marketing, and especially, if there are compelling enough features, to reduce SM-team staffing.
And finally, you're arguing ex post - the question/my point was: would it ever have been possible for him to turn a profit? You're basically arguing "the patient could not have been rescued at any point, as he is currently dead". Also, Twitter is definitely not "dead" as you're implying. Yes, user base is dwindling, but it's an erosion, not implosion.
PS: we're both using oxymoronic handles, so I guess we have to be best friends now.
A medium sized business isn't going to just pay for shit if it doesn't actually add meaningful value to do so. 6 grand a year as a dropped in extra cost is absolutely something that is going to make companies that aren't mega-conglomerations stop and re-evaluate their social media presence.
I don't think it was ever possible for Twitter to ever be profitable at the point of Musk's takeover. There's just way too much cash lit on fire already. You can change the fundamentals so you earn more than you spend, but it's not capable of making anywhere near the money speculatively thrown into it.
It's not dead yet because they haven't forced payment yet. But it's dying hard, and will die overnight the day they add a paywall.