Twitter will launch Super Follows for paid tweets
Twitter introduces new features for groups, tips and "super follows". The company led by Dorsey wants to allow influencers to get paid by their followers. Twitter's aims to increase revenue. All the details
Twitter is working on a subscription service where users would pay for "special" tweets posted by high profile accounts.
The platform announced the potential new 'Super Follows' service during its annual investor meeting, in which it explained that it is targeting 315 million users by 2023.
Twitter currently makes money from promoted ads and posts, with Super Follows it could add more revenue on the YouTube model. “Exploring public payment opportunities will allow creators and publishers to be supported directly by their audience,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
In fact, Twitter tries to diversify its revenue beyond advertising, as already anticipated at the beginning of the month. The company has outlined an ambitious plan to double its annual revenue by 2023. Most will continue to come from advertising, but the social network is also trying to generate a growing chunk of subscription revenue.
All the details.
HOW COULD TWITTER'S SUPER FOLLOWS BE
According to specialist site The Verge, Twitter showed investors an example of a $ 4.99 per month subscription that the user would pay to receive content from special accounts.
In this way, the company would allow influencers to get paid by their followers.
In fact, Twitter has stated that it is "exploring" features geared more towards influencers and creators who want to monetize their following on Twitter.
According to images shared by Twitter, the super follow would provide users with access to newsletters, special badges and other "exclusive content". Creators can also set up tweets so that only people who have paid for "super follow" can reply.
However, the company led by Dorsey did not communicate any timing.
SIMILAR TO WHAT FACEBOOK AND YOUTUBE ALREADY DO
This way Twitter would follow platforms like YouTube (owned by Google) and Facebook which have added subscription options to allow creators to offer benefits to paying followers.
A REVOLUTION FOR THE SOCIAL FROM THE EXTENSION OF CHARACTERS
The launch of this subscription content feature would be the second major change to the platform since the first tweet was launched 15 years ago on March 21, 2006 (then the platform opened to the public on July 15 of the same year).
The first big change was the extension of the characters, from the famous 140 in the beginning to the 280 characters in 2017.
“COMMUNITY”, A NEW FUNCTION FOR GROUPS
In the meeting with investors, the company also said it is working on another function that gives the ability to create and join interest-based groups.
Community is a feature similar to Facebook groups that will allow Twitter users to join based on their interests. “We are working to create a product experience that makes it easier for people to form, discover and participate in conversations that are more targeted to the communities or relevant geographies they are interested in,” Twitter wrote on a slide.
TWITTER THINK ABOUT MONETIZING
“We are rethinking our service, the behaviors and features that our product encourages or discourages when people join the conversation on Twitter,” the spokesperson added.
In early February, the company confirmed that it was still considering new monetization models to increase its revenue.
"Increasing the durability of revenue is our primary business goal," Bruce Falck, Twitter's revenue product manager, said in a statement. "You'll see us continue to research and experiment with ways to further diversify our revenue beyond announcements in 2021 and beyond."
BUT ADVERTISING REMAINS THE CENTER OF THE BUSINESS MODEL
Twitter's most significant ad revenue opportunity is to increase performance-based advertising sales, said Matt Derella, Twitter's global VP and content partnership.
As Variety pointed out, “Currently, around 85% of Twitter's ad revenue comes from brand advertising, and the company's long-term goal is to increase performance ads (ie, direct response) from 15 % to 50% of ad sales ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/twitter-lancia-super-follows-per-cinguettii-a-pagamento/ on Fri, 26 Feb 2021 13:03:52 +0000.