SAN FRANCISCO – Twitter yesterday said it plans to offer a subscription service in which users pay for special content from high-profile accounts, part of an economic model to diversify its revenue.
The globally popular social media platform announced the potential new Super Follows service at its annual investor meeting, as it searches for fresh revenue streams beyond targeted advertising.
“Exploring audience funding opportunities like Super Follows will allow creators and publishers to be directly supported by their audience, and will incentivise them to continue creating content that their audience loves,” a spokesman told AFP.
Top Twitter executives discussed Super Follows while outlining goals and plans for the near future during the streamed presentation.
“We are examining and rethinking the incentives of our service – the behaviours that our product features encourage and discourage as people participate in conversation on Twitter,” said the spokesman.
Super Follows was described during the presentation as a way for Twitter audiences to financially support creators, and receive newsletters, exclusive content and even virtual badges in exchange.
Twitter, which currently makes money from ads and promoted posts, may be able to add revenue via the Super Follows transactions.
Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi is not convinced people will be inclined to pay for special content on Twitter.
Such a model makes sense for content on platforms like YouTube, where hours of craftsmanship may be devoted to producing entertaining videos, but it is debatable whether the same can be said for tweets, she said.
No timeline is given for when Super Follows could become a feature, but it is expected that the tech giant will make further announcements in the coming months.
Twitter is also considering allowing users to join communities devoted to topics via a feature seemingly similar to Facebook’s Groups.
Twitter aims to reach a milestone of 315 million “monetisable” users in 2023, a steep increase from the 192 million it had at the end of last year, according to a filing with United States financial market regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The firm, based here, defines monetisable users as people who log in daily and can be shown ads.
Twitter, like Google and Facebook, makes most of its money from digital advertising.
The company said it is aiming for US$7.5 billion (RM30.4 billion) in revenue in 2023, more than double the US$3.7 billion it took in last year. – AFP, February 26, 2021
