I was an original member of Twyla's site. I canceled after a few months because her videos wouldn't stream at all. Something was wrong with the site, and you were lucky if you'd get through half of a video before it locked up, stuck in an endless buffer. She had some hokey way you could download the clips, but you also had to download a specific app to play them and you needed a password from her to do it. At that point it wasn't worth the effort so I decided to give her some time to work the bugs out.Re-joined a few months later because I really like Twyla - or the idea of her anyway - and she has given away enough good stuff for free that I wanted to support her. Full disclosure, I think I was still getting the original membership price of $8.99/mo, which is cheap. She had the streaming problem fixed, she was putting up some fairly provocative clips on a regular basis, and it seemed like a good deal.
And then she started not updating, and I think this is where there may be a disconnect between what Twyla would like and what we expect. I think she sees her site members more as fans than customers. She has said before she views the website like a bonus for fans who want a way to support her, and that's why she keeps the price low. I also interpret that as her saying it's not a conventional pay site, and therefore it will be updated when the mood strikes her. I canceled my subscription a few months ago because the mood wasn't striking her very often. Doesn't sound like much has changed.
I could live with sporadic updates for $9 a month, except for a couple of things: there were times she hadn't put a new video up on the website in almost a month, and then she would put three or four up on YT in a week. I'm not saying stop the freebies, but I don't understand when you put all your attention into the free stuff and completely ignore the people who think enough of your work to pay you for it.
And this was mentioned by others - I think Twyla expects you to love her creativity as much as you love her smoking. Now I'll admit, she is incredibly talented and some of her creativity is very, very sexy. And some of it is also Twyla in a platinum blonde wig, dressed like a 70s hooker, sitting in the sink smoking More 120s. I probably just ran a few different clips together but you get the idea. I'm not ragging on it; no doubt that is a dream scenario for more than one person in this community. It's just not mine, and she seemed to be doing a lot of clips that style. There was also a tendency towards distracting Movie Maker effects and a lot of her homemade techno tracks instead of natural audio. Personally that doesn't do it for me.
I like Twyla - I think she's very talented and I wish her well. I'm just not sure she understands something crucial, and it's something a lot of women doing this lately don't seem to get: this is a business, not a mutual admiration society. Most of the folks buying their stuff don't have a great deal of disposable income. Beyond that, you're competing for dollars in a niche market where no one ever got rich, even before the economy cratered. There are months when I get done paying the bills and I might have $20 left to spend on "SF entertainment". In that case, even though I might like to support Twyla, am I going to give her half of my $20 for a month of no updates? Or am I going to buy 3 clips from Fran? The question sort of answers itself.
Probably sounds harsh, but after 15 years I'm not going to romanticize this into something it's not. Stop providing content, customers stop paying - the end. Just some thoughts by a random Joe Consumer out in the community. YMMV.
