Twitter and the value of time
Why the cranking about post limits, isn’t about post limits
I’ve seen a lot of posts and articles about the advent of Threads. Dubbed the Twitter Killer, the theory is that this platform will rise because things at Twitter aren’t going well.
I shrugged this story off. I’m not planning to create a Threads account because I don’t trust Zuckerberg, and I have no stake in the Twitterverse either. I never got the magic, and I’m good with that.
But then, while I was sitting at a high-top table enjoying a late afternoon breeze with my chips and salsa, a comment on the situation caught my attention, sneaking up on me in a newsletter I only skim. It read:
The past week’s decision by Elon Musk to limit free users to viewing 600 posts a day — enough for maybe 20 minutes of scrolling, maybe less — has sent a fresh wave of Twitter users looking for alternatives.
My reaction was, “600 posts? That is a lot of posts! What in the world are you doing on Twitter that long?”
And that made me realize we’ve been talking about this situation all wrong.
When Musk took over Twitter, he made it known that one of his objectives was to make the company profitable, while another was to solve the problems that have plagued Twitter for years1, like viewpoint censorship, tolls, and bots. He also spent a lot of time chiding the woke, airing out the dirty laundry of the previous leadership, and expounding on his commitment to free speech. You can signal lots of things from your own handle, but at a certain point, you must deliver value.
The changes he’s making can be seen as a live test of what his users value — and how much they value it.
He started with status. Users of Twitter valued those blue checkmarks given out by the staff to the Twitter elite under the old Twitter regime. No more; now you can purchase that shiny blue checkmark.
Here’s the thing about status: once you can pay for it, the value of the signifier plummets. (For those interested in reading more about status, Rob Henderson published several good pieces, including one on this specific topic).
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Then Musk shifted to testing the idea of Twitter as a media company. According to one source, at least 500 million tweets are sent daily. Assuming users aren’t there only to create posts, but to read other people’s posts (an assumption validated by their ire at having what they can read limited), perhaps there’s a way to capitalize on that value.
So Musk introduced limits1 (poorly, but that’s a post for another day). Verified account holders can peruse a maximum of 6,000 posts daily, while unverified users can read 600 posts, and newly registered, unverified users can access 300 posts per day. (He has since increased the limit to 10,000, 1,000, and 500, respectively. But let’s stick with the original numbers that had everyone’s knickers in a twist.)
For no monetary exchange, you can read 600 posts every day. What does that really mean?
Most tweets have a maximum of 280 characters. 600 tweets at 280 characters equals 168,000 characters, which is the equivalent of 33,600 words on average2 or 42 articles3.
Yes, I realize some posts are pictures or videos, not words, but you get my drift. While users bemoan that they’ve been limited, these numbers suggest the opposite. And what’s more, these numbers represent the free tier. If you pay a mere $8 per month, multiply the posts you can read by ten. Read: 420 articles.
Balking that Twitter now limits the number of posts they can view based on how much they pay tells me that people aren’t getting sufficient value out of reading these posts to make it with the monetary investment to access more. What does that say about the value of what's being posted on Twitter?
But I'm not done. Let's go back to the comment that caught my attention:
The past week’s decision by Musk to limit free users to viewing 600 posts a day — enough for maybe 20 minutes of scrolling, maybe less — has sent a fresh wave of Twitter users looking for alternatives.
The author clarifies not how many words 600 posts represent but how many minutes of scrolling, with a double maybe in there to emphasize how puny 20 minutes is.
Whether those bemoaning these limits realize it or not, their reactions reveal that the true value of Twitter is as a distraction.
We can’t stand the idea that someone would limit our scrolling habit. We want to be able to do it wherever and for however long we please — free of charge.
Perhaps Musk is delivering the value we need rather than the value we want by limiting our time scrolling. Perhaps having people pay to access posts will force the quality of the content to increase, so it’s worth both your time and your dollar. And perhaps monetary cost barriers will reduce the number of bots stinking up the place.
Regardless of Musk's motives, it's clear we're undervaluing our time.
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[1] Elon Musk announced “temporary limits to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation.” Is it possible all of his choices go toward fixing the issues users have complained about, like fake accounts? Yes, it’s possible. His theory seems to be that to get a better user experience, we need to know users are human. It’s not worth it for bots to spend $8 per fake account, so there’s a barrier. Post limits are also a barrier because the bots can only spread their spam so far. He also seems disinterested in having his users’ experience damaged (or in having his resources drained) by AI companies showing up to feast on the data. I have no stake in whether or not this line of thinking is working.
[2] 2500 characters divided by 5 characters per word (the standard definition of an average word) equals 500 words. Source
[3] I used a baseline of 800 words per article.
[4] Assuming the average reading speed of an adult individual is 238 words per minute, it takes approximately 4 minutes and 12 seconds to read 1000 words. Source
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