Twitter is finally launching a way to get paid for tweeting that does not involve putting a Venmo link in your bio, promoting a Patreon or using the app to search for a wealthy spouse.
On Thursday, the company announced a new feature that could totally change the way the app works: Super Follows, which basically consists of paid subscriptions to individual Twitter feeds. Users will now be able to access certain types of third party content on Twitter with “Super Follows”, which allows them to charge more for various types of content. According to Verge, which can include paid subscriber access to private tweet feeds, new newsletter featureor profile badges. Another feature announced on Thursday, the ability for users to create and join groups called Communities, may also have paid access. Both additions will not be released for a few months and, according to The Verge, it is unclear how big Twitter will be with revenue.
This is a big change in the way Twitter operates: an old and rather tired joke on the site is that “this site is free”, referring to none of its contents that directly cost any money. The other part of this equation is that monetizing a presence on Twitter is impossible without referring fans to another place, even if it is just to pay for access to a private Twitter feed. So this is kind of a big change as it could reshape the incentives for users to join the site in the first place and allow Twitter to compete directly with the crowdfunding app Patreon and similar payment tools on Facebook and YouTube.
It is also easy to see how this could open a kind of Pandora’s box for Twitter. There has long been a struggle to control toxic communities like 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 feeds for subscribers can also allow those more 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 to site moderators. (It is already possible to do this through direct messages, blocked accounts and external coordination, but still.)
Likewise, the Communities feature seems very close to Facebook Groups. Facebook switched from the news feed to an emphasis on Groups in 2019, which had disastrous consequences after these groups were plagued with death threats, harassment and calls for violence.
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Another thing that Twitter has not clarified is whether it will allow Super Follows for sexual content, a type of content that is subject only to one handful of restrictions elsewhere on the site (like not posting on banner images or profile pictures). Enabling this would put the site in direct competition with places like OnlyFans, although when Motherboard’s Samantha Cole asked Twitter whether or not it will allow users to pay for pornography, the company responded with a non-response, claiming it was “examining and rethinking our service incentives.”
The announcement also sparked a wave of speculation I’m-am-kidding-or-am-not reporters and other media about whether or not your employers will allow you to charge for tweets. It is no secret that journalists are among the most Twitter addicted people on the planet and represent a large percentage of advanced users that dominate the app feed … and therefore it’s easy to see why this is an attractive fantasy for them.
Suffice it to say that although anything that subsidizes, say, tech bloggers buying sophisticated aquariums welcome, how big the reader’s appetite for funding 280-character insights or how willing news organizations are to allow the team to stay on the sidelines remains speculative at best.
Twitter recently launched a number of features, including Instagram Stories-esque Fleets; newsletters; it is a Club type audio chat tool. Purchased a screen sharing application called Squad which can be useful if you decide to launch a streaming service and an adtech company called CrossInstall which could help fix your notoriously broken advertising tools. This can all be related to a failed investor scam led by vampire hedge fund Elliott Management last March, requiring Twitter to keep up with its much more lucrative competition.
According to Verge, Twitter said during a business presentation on Thursday that paid subscriptions and the Communities feature are marked as “what’s next” without presenting a solid timetable for implementation. By CNBCTwitter told analysts and investors that it expects the new features to help reach its goal of $ 7.5 billion in annual revenue by 2023, about twice as much as the money it now earns.