This New Twitter Feature Allows Users to Charge Their Followers for Additional Content
Groups are also coming on Twitter to make it less confusing to beginners
Twitter has announced two new big features coming on the platform soon. They include a new way for users to charge their followers for additional content and a way to create and join communities on the platform.
Both of these features imitate some of the most successful ideas in the .com boom.
Super Follows is one of the big upcoming changes on the platform enabling Twitter users to charge their followers for access to additional content directly. “Premium content” could include additional tweets, newsletter subscriptions, or access to a community.
A mockup of Super Follows shows that subscribers will also get perks like a supporter badge and deals and discounts. Presumably, rates will vary. The mockup shows a user paying $4.99 for the extra perks.
Such features are booming and are the reason for the recent popularity of newsletter subscription platforms like Substack, which is worth several million dollars. Twitter Inc. recently acquired Revue, a newsletter platform, and has been spotted integrating it into its social media platform. So, yes, newsletter subscriptions within Twitter were more than expected.
Other platforms with direct payment methods like Patreon are also immensely successful.
Twitter has, for a long time now, been considering a variety of ways to diversify its revenue streams. Twitter’s revenue heavily depends on Advertising, which isn’t reliable. Ad revenue made up nearly 90% of total revenue in Q4, 2020.
Twitter’s revenue product lead Bruce Falck said they will “continue to research and experiment with ways to further diversify our revenue beyond ads in 2021 and beyond” a fortnight ago.
Twitter will presumably have a cut from the money paid to users using Super Follows. It hasn’t specified the percentage yet.
Perhaps we could also be one step away from a premium Twitter experience, which could offer additional features at a price.
Groups on Twitter
Twitter is also adding so-called Communities, which are basically groups. Communities will include users with a common interest and provide an easy way of keeping up with particular topics. The platform’s open model needed an extra touch to incentivise more interaction, and groups could be the answer.
Groups will also make Twitter less confusing for beginners.
Groups are what make social media platforms thrive if we take Facebook, for example.
I use Facebook(barely), but I’m only interested in specific groups that I’m a member of when I do. Besides that, there would be no Facebook for me ever. And I would have already struck out that account a long time ago.
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