New features will also help Twitter take on Facebook and Clubhouse
Twitter is branching out from advertising to find more ways to make money — both for itself and for its most prolific users, whether those are businesses, celebrities or regular people.
In an investor presentation last week, the top execs of the social media company announced a range of new features. The presentation, which they called Analyst Day, spotlighted new feature called “Super Follows”.
Super Follows will provide new monetization
Super Follows is a new monetization mechanism which will let users charge for extra, exclusive material not shown to their regular followers. This can include subscriber-only newsletters, videos, deals and discounts.
Super Follows will encourage people to pay to follow accounts so they can receive added content, exclusive content or even badges. It could also mean that super followers receive bonus tweets.
Users would pay a monthly subscription fee to access the extra content. There was mention of a cost of $4.99 a month for these extras, but Twitter has not confirmed this.
Twitter users — and the company’s investors — have long been asking it to launch a subscription-based model. This is for internet creators and influencers use tools like Patreon, Substack and OnlyFans to make money from their online popularity.
“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,” the company said in a statement.
Super Follows is not available yet, but Twitter said it would have “more to share” in the coming months.
Features to challenge Facebook and Clubhouse
Another feature nnounced at Analyst Day was omethign Twitter calls “Communities”. These seem to finction much like Facebook’s Groups feature. “We’re 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 relevant communities or geographies they’re interested in,” the company wrote.
There is also “Twitter Spaces”, a Clubhouse competitor that lets users participate in audio chats. This feature is currently in private beta testing and not yet available to normal Twitter users.
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