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The question of why X is removed from our new update is our #1 question, understandably, so going to answer this in full, just once. We did not plan on removing X, it only happened at the last minute, but you all deserve to know the full reason. Long post..
X is welcome to monetize their platform however they like. We know first hand it costs a lot of money to run a website, especially as big as X, especially if your goal is to be profitable vs just spending VC funding and operating at a loss. Also, when choosing customers a business must decide if they want a few very high paying customers, or a lot of lower paying customers, or a mix. Each has their own benefits.
A decade ago when we added Twitter stats to our website there was no charge to developers from Twitter so they were squarely in the get a lot of low/no paying customers category. We too are in that category as most of the information on our website can be accessed for free. We do have paid features for power users, but even those we price as low as we can to keep the website running and the small team on board to maintain and expand them.
Two years ago X decided to switch this up. The API they provided to developers was divided into three paid levels. Thankfully everything we needed to use to operate was included in their lowest level, a $100/mo charge which eventually changed to $200/mo.
Last month however X reached out, via their lawyer, and stated that Social Blade was not allowed to use the $200/mo package anymore, and should be on the Enterprise package which they don't list an exact price for publicly but list that it ranges from $42,000 to $210,000 a month if you click apply now for it on their developer website. They said their intention is that any established website/app/etc is supposed to be on Enterprise. They said the other tiers are for hobbyist or prototypes and said "all of your peers have either had to unwind or transition to enterprise" and encouraged us to "expand and monetize your X integration more aggressively."
There was some talk about a lower price, but they would not check if they were even allowed to offer it without us committing to paying it first, and even the lower price was still a major price hike and wouldn't change this outcome too much. Our biggest ask was to be able to have a gradual increase to allow us to grow things along with them, but they were not interested in this.
At the end of the day we were left with a choice. Either immediately put all X stats behind a paywall and aggressively monetize facing backlash from that, or remove X from our website. Depending on how aggressively monetized this would mean somewhere from hundreds to many thousands of you would need subscribe out of the gate for us to just break even.
While it's not impossible that we'd be able to get that many of you to sign up right away for something that was free up to this point, it was a giant risk that could end up in us not being able to run the rest of the website either.
We hold no ill will towards X and defend their right to monetize however they see fit. If they did want to work with us on a sustainable path forward to bring things back they have our contact info. Just like they made a business decision to keep their lights on, we did the same.
So with all of that said, we're again very sorry about the removal of X from the website. Hopefully this helps you understand a little more of what happened behind the scenes. Thank you to our amazing community who has supported us over the years for understanding.
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