What are Super Followers? New Twitter feature, briefly explained

Twitter thinks that its tweets – or at least some of them – can really be worth something. At the a virtual event for investors on Thursday, the company announced that it is planning to launch a post-pay feature called Super Follows, in which users will be able to pay people who follow for their best tweets.

With Super Follows, Twitter will allow users to earn money from the content they make unique to specific followers. Sample screenshots released by the company show that the payment scheme can take many forms. For example, a follower can pay a creator who follows Twitter a few dollars a month to access that user’s exclusive newsletter or to view special tweets available only to Super Followers. They can also join a particular group or access a badge that shows they support that creator.

The idea that you would pay someone for your tweets may seem far-fetched, but a Twitter spokesman told Recode that the goal is to “rethink our service incentives”. Basically, the premise seems to be that this post-pay feature will help build more specific communities around specific topics.

Another change coming to Twitter: a tool similar to a group called Communities. We don’t know much about this feature that is yet to come – Twitter says more information will come later this year – but the idea seems to be a more private and controlled way for communities to gather on Twitter outside the public eye.

“[I]It can still be difficult to find and connect directly with people who share your interests in specific conversations, ”a company spokesman told Recode. “This year, we are making it easier for you to discover, participate and form conversations with communities that share your interests.”

None of Twitter’s newly announced features are currently available, but the company says it will reveal more information in the coming months. Still, Thursday’s announcement is a sign that Twitter wants to be more than an incredibly public online discussion space and that the company is leaning towards the smallest “micro-communities” that form organically on its platform. .

After all, someone can log on to Twitter to see the latest global news, but someone is also on the site because they’re following a certain set of users and influencers, whether they’re posting about Tesla or Taylor Swift.

The arrival of Super Follows and Communities comes as Twitter moves to imitate closed resources available on other platforms. At the end of last year, Twitter launched “Fleets”, stories similar to Snapchat that disappear and are only available to followers. The company is also expanding its new Spaces tool, small audio-based rooms that function like the new Clubhouse app. And, following in the footsteps of services like Substack, Twitter earlier this year acquired the Revue email newsletter service and is working on integrating subscription-based newsletters directly through its public Twitter accounts.

Twitter’s recent changes also indicate that the site hopes to add more layers to its historically public platform. All signs indicate that by the end of 2021, a user with a particularly promising tweet will have a lot more control over the audience who reads it, from being able to charge people for that content to sharing the post in a more private community to even posting on an ephemeral fleet.

The move to more closed content means that Twitter will also encounter more challenges, such as the proliferation of misinformation and harmful (or even dangerous) content that can be fostered in private online spaces. (After the launch of Fleets, some pointed out that the closed and short-lived nature of the content could make it easier to spread incorrect information.) It is also unclear how the addition of more payment-based components will affect the famous free platform.

In the meantime, if you have a perfect post in mind, Thursday’s announcement indicates that it might be worth keeping it a little longer. The reward can be more fruitful than just “enjoying” and retweeting.

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