Twitter is working on a host of new features, many of which will focus on monetisation strategies for content creators and the social media platform. The company has already rolled out a tip jar for select accounts, and it is also working on a new ‘subscription’ feature called Twitter Blue.
Now, reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who is known for revealing app features before they are announced, has given a glimpse of what this subscription service will look like and might cost. According to her tweet, Twitter Blue will cost $2.99 per month, and it will be offered as an in-app purchase feature on the App Store.
What will Twitter Blue offer
As revealed by Wong, Twitter Blue will have some special features such as the ability to undo a tweet, Collections where users can see all their favourite tweets in one place and a reader mode as well. The last one on the list is coming soon, it would seem.
It will also offer more themes and colour schemes for users, who are paying to use the service. Custom app icons will also be offered as the screenshots reveal.
Twitter Blue: What else do we know so far
One of the most important features will be the ability to undo a tweet. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has made it clear in the past that they won’t offer an edit button for tweets, but this undo option can be seen as a tradeoff of sorts.
As Bloomberg reported earlier this year, Twitter confirmed that its subscription product will also let people charge followers to access special content. So a creator or independent journalist or celebrity could also charge people in order to access select paid content on the platform. This is a strategy that more and more social media platforms might deploy in the future given the success of sites like OnlyFans, Patreon, which offer a subscription-based model for creators.
Twitter also plans to introduce a new feature called “Super Follows,” as part of this subscription model. The content could range from exclusive tweets to audio conversations to even paid newsletters.
Kayvon Beykpour, Twitter’s head of product, revealed that the company plans to roll out Super Follows “sometime this year,” though it is not clear whether the feature will be limited to the US market initially. Bloomberg reported that Twitter could also charge for features such as an-free feed, Tweetdeck, higher-quality audio, and perhaps in-depth analytics.
Twitter and newsletters
In January, Twitter also confirmed its purchase of newsletter startup Revue. According to the company blog post, Twitter said that writers, experts and curators, especially those creating long-form content “are a valuable part of the conversation” and it wants to offer them news way to build their audience and earn revenue. The Revue deal is part of these efforts as outlined in the blog.
Twitter says the idea is to help “writers connect with their subscribers, while also helping readers better discover writers and their content,” while helping them generate revenue. It has also made Revue’s Pro features free for all accounts and lowered the paid newsletter fee to 5 per cent, which it says will ensure writers can “keep more of the revenue generated from subscriptions.”
“We will continue to invest in Revue as a standalone service, and its team will remain focused on improving the ways writers create their newsletters, build their audience and get paid for their work. We’re also expanding their team and hiring for key roles across engineering, design, research and data science,” the blog post added.
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