knightly

It's important to note that Plus! subs are likely only ever going to be a stopgap measure and are unlikely to cover the full balance of the site's monthly expenses unless (until?) there are more large influxes of active users - Cohost is ALREADY converting active users to paying users to a degree that other freemium service providers would sacrifice their firstborn to achieve, the problem is that there aren't ENOUGH users (yet) for that to translate into sustainability.

What these bumps in monthly revenue do is allow @staff to reduce the amount of debt they take on from their funder while they develop new user-retention and revenue-generation features (and while they wait for the userbase to grow). Which isn't nothing! When you're roughly half a million dollars in debt with interest accruing, it's very prudent to want that number to go up as little as possible! These revenue bumps are also a great proof-of-concept for the funder and probably make them feel very confident in their investment. However, @staff have said multiple times that there's really nothing at this point stopping them from securing more cash from the funder other than their own reluctance to take on more debt than they have to. The money's there when they need it, which isn't quite the same thing as the site being in dire straits & in danger of shutting down if subs don't increase.

For what it's worth, I think sustainability is probably not too far off - Twitter keeps teetering (I imagine the site will see another influx of users around the time Tweetdeck goes Blue-only in a few weeks), Tumblr is making theatening noises, and the site's profile has never been higher as a potential New Destination. User subscriptions are going to be a real money-spinner when they're implemented, since "Patreon/Onlyfans but with an actual functional social network attached" is kind of a revenue wet dream. The main thing that @staff and the site need is time. Which they've got!

I would, but I can’t even consistently cover rent.