Why Twitter is stuck (and will remain that way)

This week Elon Musk suggested that people should pay to earn the blue verified account mark and other premium features (already available through Twitter Blue).

This offer was generally met with a “meh” from the Twitterati, but I think a more interesting debate is why this subscription idea is so important. In fact, the future of Twitter and Elon Musk’s “town hall” vision depends on it.

He knows Twitter is stuck but this won’t fix it. Let’s explore this today.

Show me the money

Twitter has to make money, and there are basically two options: Ads and subscriptions.

Advertising is by far the most preferred and profitable method, and we can witness the success of Facebook and Google as obvious examples of this.

Why is there no premium subscription version of Facebook? One simple reason. If you offer an ad-free version, there are less people to attract advertisers! The more people, the more data and more ad views. Creating Facebook subscriptions would be a really dumb idea.

But here’s the problem. If you have an ad-based model based on time on site, your best business model is hate. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. If you want tons of people on your site, just open the doors and let them hate each…