> subscriptions account for half of Twitter’s revenue

A lofty ambition indeed. Getting $5billion out of twitter users or an anual subscription of $15 out of 100% of the users sounds like hard work. However, if you drop the avertising revenue to $350 million you can do the WhatsApp $1 a year model.

Seems dumb, ads pay more than users

Even worse, they're offering reduced ads as a part of their new subscriptions, so every subscription actively decreases ad revenue.

How is that different from YouTube premium, sure it's more than $8 but comes with zero ads.

YouTube and Twitter are, at least currently, very different services. Even if it's the same, the fact is that this $8 needs to not only supplement existing ad revenue but replace it, which makes the financial challenges worse than if it were merely $8 for perks.

Lowering the denominator is a fun way to get to half ^_^