Under increasing pressure from investors to come out of its slow growth, Twitter is taking the offer of a subscription product seriously to create a new revenue stream. Advertising will remain the bread and butter of the social network for the foreseeable future, but according to Bloomberg, we may be able to get an update on subscription plans as soon as the latest Twitter earnings are released on Tuesday.
Twitter profit in the last quarter exceeded expectations, but its new user numbers have disappointed Wall Street, and there is a growing perception that the platform may be reaching an upper limit for its audience. This means that it is time, once again, to think of new ways to draw blood from this stone. Bloomberg sources say that several Twitter teams are competing to develop subscription options with features like tipping and / or charging a fee for TweetDCheck the options most likely to launch.
The idea of taking a fee from the tips that users send to their favorite influencers has already been successful on Twitch and other services, so trying on Twitter seems relatively easy. The idea of charging a subscription fee for some kind of enhanced version of TweetDeck would be more of a gamble, but it could act as a test for advanced users’ tolerance of a paid model.
NYU Professor Scott Galloway became a punching bag last week when I tried to explain the explosion of GameStop’s actions as the product of excited guys who didn’t have enough sex. But the vision of the Galloway galaxy’s brain overshadowed a rather compelling article he wrote for New york magazine who argues that Twitter is leaving money for influencers at the table. The professor, who is an unhappy Twitter investor, sees a future in which Twitter charges users a monthly fee when they exceed a certain number of followers. The fee would cover access to improved analytical tools. By Galloway’s calculations, Twitter only needs 15% of its user base to shell out $ 10 a month to entirely replace its ad revenue.
But replacing ad revenue entirely doesn’t seem to be the company’s top priority. In a statement sent to Gizmodo, Bruce Falck, Twitter’s revenue product leader, said that increasing “revenue durability” is the main objective, and the company will experiment with non-ad-based revenue in 2021. “This may include subscriptions and other approaches that will give people and businesses of all sizes on Twitter access to unique resources and enhanced opportunities for content creation, discovery and engagement, “said Falck, emphasizing that the team does not expect any of these experiments to produce” any revenue significant “next year.
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A subscription version of TweetDThe eck can give Twitter some indication of the level of interest that companies and influencers would have in a full payment model for tweeting. If the company’s most important users paid a few dollars for an ad-free experience with better organizational options and more robust analysis, perhaps they would be willing to go through with it.
According to Bloomberg, other revenue options at the table include charging for: ad-free feeds, high-quality video uploads, custom profile verification and appearance. These options look very small in isolation, but they can be attractive if they are put in a package.
Perhaps the most radical idea launched is an option for popular users to offer a separate feed of exclusive content for subscribers. Twitter could keep a small part of the subscription and never have to ask users directly for money. But that can lead to long-term problems, as the company’s best users put their best tweets behind paywalls instead of fueling the wider network.
Twitter has been launching ideas like this for some time and, although investors look at Facebook’s stock price with envy, the fact that Twitter almost never changes is one of the things that makes it unique. We may receive some surprising announcements during tomorrow’s earnings conference call, but don’t expect Jack Dorsey to leave your comfort zone anytime soon.