Twitter will allow users to charge followers to see premium posts in their Super Follows feature and enable newsletters through Twitter Revue as the company seeks to find more ways to make money
Twitter is introducing a new feature which will allow users to charge for exclusive material not available to ordinary followers.
The development, announced in a presentation to investors on Thursday, will see the social media company branch 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.
The new feature will be called Super Follows, and will come online later this year, product lead Kayvon Beykpour told analysts.
Twitter provided a mockup of its Super Follow feature, which it set at $4.99 a month
Twitter on Thursday announced that some users will be allowed to charge for content
This can include subscriber-only newsletters, videos, deals and discounts. Users would pay a monthly subscription fee to access the extra content.
In a mockup screenshot, Twitter showed an example where a user charges $4.99 per month to receive a series of perks, but Beykpour said the price would vary depending on the content provider.
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, aims to double revenue by 2023 to $7.5 billion
He said it was 'highly customizable based on the creator.'
He added: 'They can directly monetize from the audience they've already built on Twitter.'
Twitter users - and the company's investors - have long been asking it to launch a subscription-based model, as a growing number of internet creators and influencers use tools like Patreon, Substack and OnlyFans to make money from their online popularity.
The subscriptions will also allow Twitter to tap into a broader range of revenue sources in a world where online advertising is dominated by a Facebook-Google duopoly.
Twitter showed off their Communities feature, which will rival Facebook Groups
Twitter did not detail what percentage of the revenue it would share with celebrities and others who sign up paying subscribers.
'Exploring audience funding opportunities like Super Follows will allow creators and publishers to be directly supported by their audience and will incentivize them to continue creating content that their audience loves,' the company said in a statement.
Super Follows is not available yet but Twitter says it will have 'more to share' in the coming months.
Another new product, Revue, will let people publish paid or free newsletters to their audience.
There will also be Twitter Spaces, a Clubhouse competitor that lets users participate in audio chats. It is currently in private beta testing, which means it's not yet available to the general Twitter audience.
Finally, the company announced a new feature called Communities, which appear to be its take on Facebook Groups.
The San Francisco-based company also said its revenue goal for 2023 is more than $7.5 billion, more than double its 2020 revenue of $3.7 billion.
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