Twitter Thinks You’ll Pay For Tweets: Are They Wrong?

Twitter Thinks You’ll Pay for Tweets: Are They Wrong?

If you missed it this week, Twitter is introducing a few new features. One of them is a Groups feature that appears to be similar to what you can do on Facebook. The other feature is Twitter’s version of a newsletter that followers can subscribe to. I’m still not sure exactly how that will work, but newsletters are a big deal now so Twitter is riding the wave on that one.

The most interesting new feature that caused Twitter to trend on its own platform this week has been the revelation that it will soon be possible to charge your followers for Tweets.

The purpose of this, I assume, is for creators. They want to give content creators a chance to earn revenue directly from their audience. My question is has Twitter spoiled everyone too much to expect them to alter their behaviour? Meaning that we’re all so accustomed to using Twitter as a place for posting and reading random thoughts. The overwhelming majority of these posts aren’t anywhere close to being exclusive content. Asking followers to now pay for tweets might be a bit of a stretch.

An opportunity for creators

From the creator side, it does look like an opportunity. There are questions: will paid tweets have a larger character count? Will there be a separate platform for paid Twitter users and creators? Will there be a minimum charge?

I have to admit that I’m a bit skeptical. I’m all for creators making money, but I’m not sure that this is the way forward on Twitter. Obviously, the people at Twitter have done massive research and must truly believe that this is an opportunity. I mentioned earlier that they’re on-trend and they are.

Substack has given life to newsletters (read my latest entry “My Failures As A Father”). So much so that Facebook is adding newsletter functionality this summer. And platforms like Patreon, which allows creators to charge their fans a subscription fee, are becoming more and more popular.

Twitter wants pieces of these pies and these new features show that.

What do you think? Is this the right move for Twitter? Can you see yourself paying for tweets?

Twitter Thinks You’ll Pay For Tweets: Are They Wrong? was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.