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Twitter will soon allow you to charge people to see your tweets

Twitter secures a new revenue stream with its latest announcements.

What you need to know

  • Twitter has just announced that it plans to introduce two new features to the platform.
  • Super Follows will allow influencers to charge followers for access to perks like exclusive content.
  • Communities will allow users to join groups around their favorite topics.

Earlier this month, it was rumored that Twitter had been considering a subscription model and "tipping" to bolster the platform, which has often lagged far behind its closest competitor in terms of revenue. Other possible revenue streams that were reportedly being considered, included charging for TweetDeck or to use more advanced features like higher-quality video. During Twitter's virtual Analyst Day on Thursday, the company announced that it is, in fact, developing some of these products.

The first is Super Follows, which is a paid subscription model that charges members for exclusive content from accounts they follow. For example, a user could pay $4.99 a month to receive perks like subscriber-only newsletters, discounts on products and services, and tweets that only they could see. To give us an idea of how it might work, the mockup that Twitter displayed showed an influencer compiling a tweet that would only be pushed out to Super Followers. These subscribers would also receive some kind of supporter badge.

Twitter would also tie in its latest features like Fleets or Spaces, the latter of which is its own Clubhouse-like service that the company has been testing. While Clubhouse is currently only available on iOS devices, Twitter's version is also available on the best Android phones, something the company could take advantage of.

While Twitter was often rumored to plan some kind of subscription model for the platform, this approach appears to give influencers control over their subscriptions, similar to other platforms like Patreon, as opposed to just charging users to use Twitter as some may have feared.

Twitter also announced a new feature called Communities, which is similar to Facebook Groups. According to an image obtained by The Verge, it looks like a more focused way for users to become part of a conversation around topics they might enjoy, like cats, social justice, surfing, and more. This feature could also tie into Super Follows, allowing subscribers to gain exclusive access to an influencer's Community. It seems Twitter has been working on the web app for some time now.

There's currently no timeline on when to expect these new features, and details don't seem to be completely ironed out just yet. Given the company's goal to have 315 million monetizable daily active users and double its annual revenue by the end of 2023, it may not be long before we see these features crop up.


by Derrek Lee