Twitter To Launch ‘Super Follows’, New Feature That Allows Users Charge For Exclusive Content

By Edna Wande On Feb 26, 2021

Twitter has announced plans for a new feature called “super follows“, which will enable users to charge and get paid for exclusive content.

The move comes as Twitter is branching out from advertising to find more ways to make money — both for itself and for its most prolific users.

The social media company unveiled its plans at a virtual event held for investors on Thursday while rolling out new features that would be available to users on a yet-to-be-announced date.

According to Twitter, the ‘super follows’ feature is a payment arrangement that allows content creators and journalists to charge their followers, after subscribing for additional and exclusive content.

The feature also allows subscribers to have access to exclusive posts, newsletters, groups and a supporter badge on their profile alongside the option to cancel anytime.

The company in statement about the new feature said;

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.

Twitter users – and the company’s investors – have long been asking it to launch a subscription-based model.

Following this, Twitter acquired Revue, that allows users to publish and monetise email newsletters. It appears that the continuation of the acquisition comes with the “Super Follows” feature that is expected to compete with other creator monetization platforms such as 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.

However, Twitter did not detail what percentage of the revenue it would share with celebrities and others who sign up paying subscribers.

Super Follows is not available yet but Twitter says it will have “more to share” in the coming months.

It’s the first time in a while that the platform has announced significant changes to the way in which people can use it

Another new feature that was announced on Thursday is ‘communities’. Under this feature, users can create and join groups based on their interests.

Users will also be able to read and engage more tweets relating to the communities they have created or joined. The ‘communities’ feature is similar to Facebook groups.

The new development comes few months after the company launched ‘Twitter spaces’, a new product that allows users to converse in audio chat rooms, just like Clubhouse.

It is currently in private beta testing, which means it’s not yet available to the general Twitter audience.

The company is rolling out new features as it plans to double its global annual revenue by 2023.

Twitter, which was launched in 2006 and recorded its first annual profit in 2018, said its revenue goal for 2023 is more than $7.5bn, more than double its 2020 revenue of $3.7bn.