Twitter is finally rolling out a way to get paid for tweeting where you don’t post a Venmo link in your bio, promote a Patreon, or use the app to look for a wealthy husband.
On Thursday, the company announced a new feature that could completely change the way the app works: Super Follows, which are essentially paid subscriptions to individual Twitter feeds. Users can now pay for certain types of content on Twitter with “Super Follows”, allowing them to charge more for different types of content. According to The Verge, which can include paying subscribers accessing private tweet feeds, Twitter’s new newsletter functionor profile badges. Another feature announced Thursday, the ability for users to create and join groups, called communities, is also payable. Both additions won’t be rolled out in the coming months, and according to The Verge, it’s not clear how big Twitter’s revenue cut will be.
This is a big shift in the way Twitter works: a long-running and quite tired joke on the site is that “this site is free,” referring to no content that directly costs money. The reverse of that equation is that making money with a Twitter presence is impossible without referring fans elsewhere, even if it’s just to pay for access to a Twitter presence. private Twitter feedSo this is kind of a big shift, in that it could reshape the incentives for users to join the site in the first place and allow Twitter to compete directly with crowdfunding app Patreon and similar payment instruments on Facebook and YouTube .
It’s also easy to see how this could open up some sort of Pandora’s Box for Twitter. It has long struggled to rein in toxic communities such as white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and far-right trolls, all of whom could now use the app as a way to make money. The addition of private subscriber feeds allows those so inclined to hide things like harassment campaigns behind paywalls, where such content will be accessible to a smaller group of paying followers who are unlikely to report it to the site’s moderators. (It’s already possible to do this through direct messages, locked out accounts, and off-site coordination, but still.)
Likewise, the Communities feature sounds pretty close to Facebook Groups. Facebook turned from the news feed to an emphasis on groups in 2019, which it had catastrophic consequences after said groups were ravaged by death threats, intimidation and calls for violence.
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Another thing that Twitter has not clarified is whether it allows Super Follows for sexual content, which is a type of content that is only subject to a handful of restrictions elsewhere on the site (such as not posting in banner images or profile pictures.) Allowing it would put the site in direct competition with places like OnlyFans, although Samantha Cole of Motherboard Twitter asked Whether or not users could pay for porn, the company responded with a non-response, claiming it was “investigating and rethinking the incentives of our service.”
The announcement has also sparked a wave of am-I-kidding-or-am-I-not-me speculation from reporters and other types of media on whether or not to allow their employers to charge for tweets. It’s no secret that journalists are among the most Twitter addicted people in the world and a large percentage of them the main users that dominate the app’s feed … so it’s easy to see why this is an appealing fantasy to them.
Suffice it to say, although everything subsidizes tech bloggers who buy beautiful aquariums Welcome, the reader’s interest in funding 280 character insights or how willing news organizations are to leave staff on the sidelines remains speculative at best.
Twitter has recently introduced numerous features, including Instagram Stories-Like FleetsNewsletters; and a Clubhouse-style audio chat tool. It got one screen sharing app called Squad that can be helpful if it decides to launch a streaming service and an adtech company called CrossInstall that can help fix the notoriously broken advertising tools. This could all be related to one failed investor grab led by vampiric hedge fund Elliott Management last March and demanded Twitter catch up with its much more profitable competition.
According to The Verge, Twitter said at a company presentation on Thursday that paid plans and the Communities feature will be flagged as “ what’s coming next ” without providing a solid timeline for implementation. Per CNBC, Twitter told analysts and investors it hopes the new features will help it meet its goal of $ 7.5 billion in annual revenue by 2023, roughly double the money it makes today.