ARE WE ALL GOING TO HAVE TO START PAYING TO USE TWITTER?
It’s a hard time in social media land. As far as users go, deciding what to post and which identical platform to post it on might be our biggest problems, but for the companies themselves, there’s a real question about viability and revenue that keeps raising its ugly head.
As I’ve spoken about previously, there are real issues with social media platforms making money - Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, there’s been talk about all of them and how they’re working (or not working) with advertisers to make enough money to keep going. So how do you solve a problem like free services? Twitter are reportedly looking into introducing paid premium accounts for businesses and “power users”, which will offer increased insights and analytical possibilities, similar to other paid Twitter clients such as HootSuite. Will this be enough to save them?
Realistically, these companies are giants, they're not going to disappear overnight - but there have already been reports of some fairly hefty layoffs, as new sign ups plateau and business models are under increased scrutiny. I'm sure there will be an outcry from users if Twitter do decide to implement paid accounts, but I'm not sure that's entirely fair... If you think about it, when use of the service is free, and advertising revenues are leaving a lot to be desired, PLUS they're having to spend more and more in safety and security, where is they money supposed to come from? ‘Well they should have thought about that,’ I hear you cry, and while this may be true in the grand scheme of the company, I can't personally come up with any million dollar ideas to fix the problem as it stands. If anyone else can - I'd be on the phone for a job if I were you.
So, would you pay for your Twitter account? At the moment 'regular' users won't be asked to, but it's a possibility that could arise in the future. I don't know if I'd qualify as a ‘power user’ (because what does that mean) but I do effectively use it for work, sharing stuff I’ve worked on, so I can feasibly see myself accepting it as a business expense. If you're not using it for work, just to share hilarious Meryl Streep hollering memes, then would you consider it something worth paying for?
I think this speaks to a wider issue we're seeing around the internet - since it's birth, really, we've been used to getting everything for free - but does that work long term? In the old days everyone was essentially stealing music by downloading illegally online (come on, we all were) but these days controls on torrenting sites are a lot tighter and many of us (myself included) have moved over to streaming services as the marketplace has evolved. We're seeing similar conversations around news sites - we expect the highest quality journalism and content, but we also expect it to be free... with no clickbait that might encourage page views and lead to advertising revenue because come on newspapers, where is your journalistic integrity? I think we're looking at a time of huge change online - we may reflect on this in fifteen years and wonder how we ever expected to get all of these things for nothing in the first place.
Of course, going back to Twitter, it remains to be seen whether these changes will actually come into force - the idea was first floated almost a decade ago and nothing ever came of it then. As they return to the proposal, does this mean that they've thought of ways to make it better and more viable? Or that they're now more desperate for revenue than they were in their user-growth heyday? We'll have to wait and see. If you're a seasoned hashtagger, you may want to find some wiggle room in your budget - be prepared to cough up.