Twitter is racing to “push the envelope
on how it can tap its network” of more
than 300 million users, said Lucas Matney
in TechCrunch.com. Long reluctant
to add features, Twitter is stealing the
best ideas of the competition, planning
changes that “combine the community
trends of^ Discord, the newsletter insights
of Substack, the audio chat rooms of
Clubhouse, and the creator support of
Patreon.” Last week, Twitter shared “early
details on its paid product, a feature called
Super Follow,” which will allow users to
“subscribe to their favorite creators for a
monthly price.” One screenshot the company shared suggested
a typical price could be $4.99 per month. The payments would
let creators put content behind a paywall, or perhaps offer
badges that fans could buy to flaunt their support. Twitter did
not announce a precise launch timeline but said the changes are
intended to “double its revenues by 2023.”Twitter needs to do something, said Kurt Wagner in Bloomberg
.com. It’s been “too precious with its product, moving too
slowly and simply missing a chance to change something for
the better.” Its early video feature, Vine, “could have become
TikTok if it hadn’t been mismanaged,” while Twitter’s lack of
tools that would let creators get paid for their work has allowed
competitors such as Patreon to gain a foothold. Fortunately,despite those misses, it’s still “well po-
sitioned to take advantage of prevailing
media trends.” The danger for Twitter
is that in the push for greater revenue, it
could lose trust from users, said Laura
Forman in The Wall Street Journal. “The
very appeal of Twitter lies in its ability to
allow anyone and everyone to follow hard
news bulletins together with the real-time
musings of people of interest.”Seriously, said ShaCamree Gowdy in
the San Francisco Chronicle, all we
wanted was an edit button. The reaction
(on Twitter, of course) has not been pretty, with the hashtag
#RIPTwitter trending. “The people I follow have some pretty
hot takes from time to time, but I will absolutely not pay to read
them.” But others will, said Casey Newton in Platformer.news,
and Super Follow could reshape how we get the news. “For
the past 15 years, reporters have steadily been building escape
hatches from their employers.” Now Twitter is accelerating that
process and giving journalists and other creators a powerful out.
A top reporter who can convert even a tiny fraction of her Twit-
ter audience to Super Followers might easily double the salary
she gets at a major publication. That’s a crisis for the traditional
media model. “If a publication’s top stars all begin making
significantly more via Twitter than they do from their salaries,
what’s to keep them working for the publisher at all?”Twitter: Would you pay to be a Super Follower?
Ne
wscom,^ USP
SA high-tech tool for lo-fi pictures
An anti-Instagram backlash is fueling interest
in an app that “mimics the experience of a
disposable camera,” said Taylor Lorenz in The
New York Times. Instagram took off a decade
ago with filters known to “make everything
look beautiful.” But a “shift away from highly
curated feeds has been in the works for sev-
eral years,” as more “relatable” influencers
like Emma Chamberlain popularized a more
“goofy and irreverent style.” Feeding off this,
Dispo is a new photo-sharing app that allows
users to “frame photographs through a small
rectangular viewfinder” and has “no editing
tools or captions.” Images take several hours
to “develop,” and “multiple people can take
photos on the same rolls, as might happen
with a real disposable camera at a party.”Facebook matches Google’s $1 billion
After a fight over paying for news in Australia,
Facebook pledged to give at least $1 billion
to publishers worldwide over the next three
years, said Alex Barker in the Financial Times.
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of
global affairs, called last month’s high-stakes
standoff with the Australian government a
“fundamental misunderstanding” and said the
company has already spent $600 million onnews since 2018 with agreements in a dozen
countries. The billion-dollar pledge comes after
a similar one that Google made in October.
“The $2 billion in total funding from Google
and Facebook reflects the significant shift in
commercial power toward struggling news
groups.” But with pressure on the tech plat-
forms rising, it’s not clear if the money will be
enough for them to avoid “potentially more
costly action by regulators around the world.”Farewell to a geek emporium
Many of us who grew up on the West Coast
are mourning the news that Fry’s is closing its
doors, said Parker Hall in Wired.com. Fry’s
was the regional “electronics emporium where
we bought our first CD burners, flat-screen
monitors, cordless vacuums, wireless printers,
or ATI Radeon 9800 graphics cards.” Each
store was appointed to “resemble some far-
away place like a Mayan temple or an ancient
Roman bath house,” and we’d often find ex-
cuses just to revisit them. At Fry’s, “you could
see the entire home technology revolution
sprawled out before you.” It was probably
“inevitable” that it “would slowly bleed dry
in the Amazon era.” But I’m saddened that a
new generation won’t have such a place “to
spark hands-on inspiration.”Bytes: What’s new in tech
The United States Postal Service
revealed the
winner of a
yearslong
competi-
tion to
upgrade its
mail truck,
said Sean
O’Kane in
TheVerge.com. At this point, just
about anything could be considered
an improvement over the current
trucks, which have been on the road
since 1994 and “don’t even have air-
conditioning.” After years of delays,
last week the agency announced
that Wisconsin-based contractor
Oshkosh Defense will handle the
overhaul. The new trucks will be
“dotted with cameras that give a
360-degree view, helping power
a front- and rear-collision avoid-
ance system with visual and audio
warnings as well as automatic brak-
ing.” The vehicles will also have a
distinctive—and much larger—front
windshield. The trucks will come in
both gasoline and electric versions,
disappointing some advocates who
hoped for an all-electric fleet.Innovation of the week
20 NEWS Technology
Coming: A new way to pay for sweet tweets