Twitter is planning a really new playbook: make it possible for users to follow followers and pay those being followed. Of course, within that construct, Twitter will collect a processing and platform fee. It comes down to people liking a handle to pay for exclusive contents from that handle. No matter how you look at it, that is an emerging playbook. Substack – an online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters – does that in the blogging and newsletter sector, and there is no reason it cannot work for the micro-blogging ecosystem.
The company teased the feature, which it’s calling Super Follows, during its Analyst Day presentation on Thursday. If implemented, users would have the ability to pay creators for additional content within their Twitter feeds, including exclusive announcements and newsletters.
“We’re rethinking incentives and exploring solutions to provide monetary incentive models for creators and publishers to be directly supported by their audience,” Twitter said in its presentation. A company spokesperson told CNN Business that Super Follows are not available yet but Twitter will “have more to share in the coming months.” […]
The social media company has been exploring subscription options in recent months, in an attempt to make money from its users and diversify beyond its core advertising business. Last month, it announced the acquisition of newsletter company Revue.
Twitter is working to incentivize its creators as the battle for creators intensifies as TikTok opens its treasury to help its creators make money. But looking deeper, the core motivation may not be compensating creators. Rather, Twitter is looking to diversify its revenue base from advertising. That is a smart thing to do in this age!
The whole construct of aggregation is changing. Once Google and Facebook begin to pay news publishers, expect owners of websites to begin to ask Google to pay before the search giant can index their sites. And very soon, Instagram content creators will unionize in London, asking to be treated and covered by the same law that covers Uber drivers! So, finding a way to generate revenue within your ecosystem through subscription makes sense.
Meanwhile, Twitter has launched a Clubhouse clone, joining Facebook, as they battle to freeze the rise of the new audio social app.
“Spaces is a place to come together, built around the voices of the people using Twitter, your Twitter community. Spaces are live for as long as they’re open; once ended, they will no longer be available publicly on Twitter,” Twitter said.
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It could get to when nothing will be free again on social media, since politics of data has conveniently ‘forgot’ what people enjoy for free, in exchange for data and visibility.
I can see lots of viable playbooks platform owners can deploy, so that everyone would appreciate the true cost of all the things we enjoy for free.
Facebook, Twitter, Mhagic, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, name them; everyone is updating and repositioning, working to make ads revenue a secondary or tertiary source of revenue; people should brace up for what is ahead.
Publishers, creators, advertisers, performers, all of them will soon be paying platform owners to get a space to even feature, or you think that the beating is only on the other side? Just watch out.
The social media/ web engagement and participation ordinances will be rewritten soon.
Game on…