Twitch's No Good, Very Bad Time Continues: Part 2

from the pay-to-play dept

I won't write up a big summary of the ongoing turmoil in the Twitch community for this post. If you need to be brought up to speed, go see Part 1 or our previous posts on the platform. The only summary you really need is that the past few months have seen Twitch piss nearly everyone off by doing two things. First, it bowed to the RIAA over DMCA notices and nuked a ton of creator content without warning. Second, Twitch began experimenting with very intrusive ads, along with other methods for monetizing creator content. The PR communication coming from Twitch over all of this has been wanting, to say the least.

But now it looks like Twitch is looking to tie a bow around both controversies to continue to piss off its talent even more, having announced that the once-sought-after Twitch Affiliate status, earned through a streamer's ability to get consistent eyeballs, has now been reduced to a pay-to-play scheme involving at least one record label.

Here's the text from Twitch's Affiliate site detailing who qualifies.

Who qualifies?

We’re looking for streamers who aren’t yet Partners, but who have at least 50 followers and over the last 30 days have have at least 500 total minutes broadcast, 7 unique broadcast days, and an average of 3 or more concurrent viewers. This criteria may change as the program develops.

That's been upended by this new deal worked out with music label Monstercat.

Monstercat outlined the new program in a post on its website today. If streamers subscribe to Monstercat Gold for $5 per month, they now gain access not only to a library of songs they can play during their streams, but also Twitch affiliate status. Affiliate is Twitch’s first monetization tier, which allows streamers to gain paid subscribers and Bits, which are basically a donation currency. Before this year, the only way to become an affiliate was to unlock it by having at least 50 followers, 500 total minutes broadcast, an average of 3 or more concurrent viewers, and streaming on 7 different days.

This is similar to a program that Twitch launched with SoundCloud earlier this year, which allowed SoundCloud subscribers to get fast-tracked to affiliate status. But that promotion was focused on musicians. This one, theoretically, is aimed at everybody.

In other words, for $5 a month, you can be a Twitch affiliate. If it seems like that makes the affiliate program mostly meaningless other than as a revenue source for both a music label and Twitch, that's because it does. It also comes after years of Twitch guarding its affiliate status behind merit-based metrics, which led to a ton of work being done by Twitch streamers to get that status. This is a slap in the face to all of those streamers that earned their status as opposed to paying for it.

“This seems amazingly unfair to all those folks who have worked hard to get to affiliate, but it also feels like it lessens the value of an affiliate status if you can just buy your way in,” Spawn On Me’s Kahlief Adams said on Twitter.

“I think this is not good, kind of gross, and...a little exploitative?” said commentator and streamer Thom “F.” Badinger. “Also depressing how the platform sees its creators with an issue and thinks of it as a monetization opportunity vs something they should help with.”

This Monstercat promotion, then, just turns long-simmering subtext into text: Affiliate and partner status don’t mean anything. They’re just means of incentivizing streamers to do what Twitch wants. Before, that was streaming. Now it’s giving money to companies with which Twitch has made deals. Twitch business partners, at least, must be pleased.

All of which seems to suggest that Twitch doesn't understand that its most valuable asset is the talent that chooses to stream on Twitch. Without good streamers producing good content, Twitch is a nothing. And the consistent drumbeat pissing off that talent cannot possibly be good for Twitch in the near or long term.

Honestly, at this point I'm mostly just waiting to see what Act 3 of Twitch's No Good, Very Bad Time will be.

Filed Under: affiliate, copyright, dmca, music, pay
Companies: monstercat, twitch

Apparently A Debate: Would Twitter Benefit If Users Had To Pay To Use It?

from the easy-answer dept

According to Mathew Ingram at GigaOM, there is apparently a raging debate over whether or not Twitter would actually benefit as a service if users had to pay to use it. I'll admit to being a little bit surprised when I saw this, but digging into the details brought what I think is a wonderful conclusion as to why the answer is definitively "no".

This all more or less started (or at least really took off) when Dalton Caldwell, who founded Imeem, announced he wanted to create a for-pay service similar to Twitter. Caldwell states that services like Twitter don't realize their full potential in what he deems an "advertising-supported monoculture".

"All of these services are essentially in the same business: vying for the opportunity to sell you/your clickstream to advertisers. … I have no interest in completely opting out of the social Web. But please, I want a real alternative to advertising hell. I would gladly pay for a service that treats me better."

It's a concept that I think many people might first agree with...but only if they don't think about it for more than thirty seconds. The first flaw in this line of thinking is that users paying for the service is somehow a firm requirement to avoid what Caldwell calls "advertising hell". I don't think they do; rather, I think that each new service that comes out can be built upon and each innovation can make each service better, including in the way users are impacted by advertisements. As an example, Caldwell could have penned something similar in the 90's, bemoaning a Myspace that had clearly become a musical and bloated hell, so obviously we need to make a social media site that is paid for by users.

Except that's not what we needed. We needed Facebook which, contrary to all the status updates you may have read, does not charge users.

The second flaw in Caldwell's statement is the assumption that advertising does now and always will make us want to bang our heads against the walls in frustration. Certainly advertisements can be annoying, but we've talked repeatedly about how advertising is simply more content, and it can be good or bad. As digital ads continue to get better and better, this "advertising hell" may become an "advertising heaven." Or at least an "advertising purgatory," where the annoyance factor is minimal. In any case, if ads were wanted, then Caldwell's service loses out.

But perhaps that most articulate reason why a service like Twitter should not charge users to join in is made by venture capitalist Fred Wilson:

"Wilson maintains that a free model is the only way to get the kind of network effects necessary for a large consumer business. He also argues that charging users is contrary to the rationale behind such services, since the content being monetized is coming from those same users:

'When scale matters, when network effects matter, when your users are creating the content and the value, free is the business model of choice. And I don’t think anything has changed to make that less true today. If anything, it is more true.'"

What Wilson notes about the content being created by the users is the key point to me. Twitter is a great stage, but those of us that use it are the stars (to varying degrees). To charge the people who are creating the content on your platform seems completely backwards, particularly considering the effect that will have on how your service scales. 

Consider the recent story we ran about how an Irish rail operator used Twitter to reunite a person and their dog: does that happen if you have to pay for the service, reducing its user base? I don't think it does.

Filed Under: business models, communications, free, pay, social media
Companies: twitter

Fantasy Island, Time Warner Style: You WANT To Pay More For Broadband

from the da-plane-boss-da-plane dept

techflaws.org alerted us to an Ars Technica piece about the wonderful illusory world of Time Warner Cable's CEO, Glenn Britt, and his prediction about how we, the people, will eventually learn to want to pay more for our broadband. Now, Britt made the following statement at a conference last week, but I find it much more useful to picture him saying these words as he lies naked on a private beach, one woman feeding him grapes while another woman...well, let's just say she's not feeding him grapes:

"I think you will naturally see evolve a world where people who use very little broadband expect to pay less and people who use a whole lot may complain, but in their hearts know they are going to pay more than somebody who reads e-mail once a week. I think there will always be an unlimited tier, but I think you'll see the element of consumption introduced over time."

The medical community defines a stroke, or a cerebrovascular accident, as a rapid loss of brain function due to the disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. They list the causes of a stroke as ischemia (flow blockage) or a hemorrhage (blood leakage), leaving the disturbed area unable to function. I think we can add "smart people say idiotic things that force our brains to shut down" as a third cause. Here's what happens: Someone like Britt, ostensibly a smart person, puts together a string of words filled with odd assertions and conclusions (wait...we're basing tiers for internet usage on grandmothers checking email once a week? Even when internet usage continues to do nothing but rise?), and our brains come to a screeching halt, ordering us to address this intrusion on the world of logic and reason. Here's the problem. The brain begins going into a cataclysmic collapse, realizing that there are many things wrong with these words and attempting to send the limited blood supply in the brain in several different directions to simultaneously address these grievances.

And the person strokes (not the good way).

So what's the cure? Well, my sweet internet hog friends (why aren't you checking your goddamn email!!!???), I have your cure for you. Get that blood flowing with singular purpose! Thought experiment time. If people will gradually and reasonlessly come to accept tiered broadband because they secretly want it, what likewise things will we come to accept for similarly secret reasons? I came up with a few to get you started (and to get that blood flowing again), but I'm sure the community can do even better:

1. People will eventually evolve to simply accept DRM in everything, because secretly we all know we're criminals and should be treated as such. Some people might complain, proclaiming themselves non-criminals, but what would you expect a secret criminal to say?
2. I anticipate an evolution in which the silly little people of this country will finally realize that it's entirely appropriate for moderately paid TSA agents to gently twist their nibblits in the name of security. No real reason for that evolution. Just 'cause. Sure, some uppity people might complain, but deep down they'll realize that testicular tortion is a small price to pay for feeling a little safer.
3. I think we'll naturally see a world evolve where immigrants will finally realize that American law is the law and will finally stop crossing our borders illegally simply because we can offer them a better life on our side of the imaginary lines. Why would they stop, you ask? Well...because we said so. And if our saying it doesn't work, maybe we can just get Glenn Britt to say it, for that will make it so.

Well, there you have it. Dr. Dark Helmet has saved your lives. What am I asking for in return? Make me laugh....

Filed Under: broadband, glenn britt, pay

Media Watchers Beginning To Ask Why People Would Pay For Online Journalism

from the about-time dept

Ever since the latest round of newspaper paywall/micropayment suggestions have come up, we've been asking why none of the newspapers/reporters pushing these plans can explain what added value will make people buy. And that's because almost none of them are actually thinking about this. They just keep thinking that if they add a mechanism to get people to pay, that people will magically pay, rather than go elsewhere. The problem, of course, is that readers have made it clear: if their local paper charges for online access, they'll just go elsewhere.

The newspapers, like the recording industry, seem to be under the delusion that they're somehow owed money from consumers, rather than needing to actually give them a reason to buy. Mathew Ingram points us to a Columbia Journalism Review article by Jan Schaffer that finally makes this point by saying it's time to look at the demand side of these newspaper business models, while noting that the problem isn't a lack of paywalls, but a lack of interest in what is called "journalism" these days:

In looking to reconstruct journalism, I'd start not by asking how do we get money for what we've always done. I'd ask instead: How do we provide something worth paying for? As a long-time news consumer, I have recoiled at much of what we are rendering as "journalism."

What if it's not just the business model of journalism that is broken? What if the way we are doing our journalism is broken, too? How are some of the new media makers trying to fix that?

None of this is particularly new, but it's great to see CJR finally realize that's the issue, rather than how to best structure the paywall.

Filed Under: business models, journalism, pay

Will People Pay For Investigative Journalism To Get The Results A Week Early

from the some,-but-not-many... dept

Tracy writes in to alert us to an attempt by a Milwaukee newspaper to get people to pay, specifically for investigative reporting, by publishing it in the paper a week before it goes online for free and by offering it online only to paying subscribers:

Investigative reporting is the most expensive form of journalism produced by the Journal Sentinel newsroom. Because of the expense and resources it requires, we are giving our print and e-edition subscribers exclusive access to the Preacher's Mob series. We will be doing this on a regular basis with certain enterprise stories and investigations. Online readers will be able to see the full story later this week. For now, all readers can read this summary version below or click on several interactive and multimedia features, including a mini-documentary that contains jailhouse interviews, audio files of secret recordings of Michael Lock by a law enforcement informant, and an interactive map of key dates and places in the world of Michael Lock. With an e-edition subscription, you can read the full series as it unfolds over five days in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel starting May 17.

On the whole, I don't think this is as bad an idea as some others, but it's difficult to see how it'd be successful. If the details of a story are really that interesting, then any other news organization in the area has incentive to at least report on the high points for free online and get all the online traffic that the Journal Sentinel should have received. Also, the number of people who really think it's worth paying for a few investigative reports to get it a week before others get to see it seems like a very small audience. I'd imagine the lost online ad revenue from not drawing traffic to the website is a much bigger number than the incremental new subscribers who want to read the story at the Journal Sentinel.

Filed Under: delay, investigative journalism, journal sentinel, pay

Desperation Sets In: Bill Gates Finally Launching His Plan To Bribe Users

from the search-fraud,-here-we-come dept

Way back in 2005, Bill Gates announced that one way that Microsoft could beat Google would be to pay users to use Microsoft's search engine. At the time, we noted all the problems with this approach. First off, it's been tried and failed many times in the past (even Google once had a program to pay users, though almost no one remembers it). Many such systems are also prone to gaming. Also, while we were just noting yesterday that money doesn't "ruin everything," it can change the way people view a service -- and not always in a positive manner.

Either way, Microsoft is finally moving forward with this plan, as Bill Gates is announcing a new program to give cash back to users who end up buying things following a Live.com search. It's not a pure "pay-for-search" offering, instead focusing on offering cash back after the fact for buyers. That's certainly better than a pure bribe 'em strategy, but it still seems like something of a desperation play. Basically, it's admitting that Microsoft hasn't been able to compete with Google in terms of overall user experience and now has to resort to paying users instead. In situations like this, implementation is everything, and while people will definitely use this to get certain discounts, it's not clear that it will really make a huge dent in Microsoft's efforts to lure users away from Google's overall search. In general, though, business models that pay people for doing something useful tend to make sense (it's paying them for their effort). Business models that simply pay people to attract their attention don't tend to work nearly as well (and are much less sustainable). In this case, it seems like Microsoft is doing the latter, rather than former, which may make it difficult to succeed.

Filed Under: business models, competition, incentives, microsoft live, pay, search
Companies: google, microsoft