Twitter in a virtual presentation announced a couple of new features that can dramatically change how a Twitter user interacts with the platform. During the “Analyst Day” presentation, the micro-blogging platform announced 2 key features called ‘super follows’ and ‘communities’.  

How Twitter will turn your tweets into money with “Super Follows”:  

(Image source: Twitter)

(Image source: Twitter)

Twitter is in its way to mimic other media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Patron with ‘Super Follows’. According to Twitter, the new feature will give Twitter users the incentive to provide extra content to their followers for money. The feature will allow a Twitter user to charge their followers for a bunch of extra content like tweets, access to interesting community groups, subscription to a special newsletter, or a badge where the follower can show their support. In its mockup screenshot, Twitter showed a user charging $4.99 per month to give extra perks to a follower.  

According to Twitter, the ‘Super Follows’ feature can be used by creators and publishers to directly get incentivized by their followers to keep churning out content. Twitter adding this feature in its sleuth of features comes as no surprise as direct payment options are being used by creators across multiple platforms for the last few years. 

YouTube gives content creators an option where they can ask subscribers to pay a monthly fee and in return, these creators provide their followers with “members-only” live streams, videos and at times, opportunities to interact with them over a video conferencing app. 

Although Twitter has not mentioned it, it can be safely assumed that the company will take a small cut from the creators and use that as a source of its revenue.  

The idea of paying someone for their tweets may seem ludicrous, but according to Twitter, the company wants to give its platform an overhaul by building specific communities around niche topics.  

“Twitter communities”: An answer to Facebook groups? 

(Image source: Twitter)

(Image source: Twitter)

Another interesting feature Twitter announced on Friday was “communities”. According to Twitter, ‘communities’ is very much akin to Facebook groups. Using ‘communities’, Twitter users can create, join or leave groups based on specific interests. With communities, Twitter wants to give its users the experience where they can come together in harmony and engage in interesting conversations that are more relevant to a specific topic.  

From Twitter’s mockup screenshots of the ‘communities’ feature, one can get a hint that users can create groups around seemingly trivial topics like cats or plants or more urgent topics like social justice, and be more focused on those topics. 

It should be noted that Facebook groups have been immensely successful for the platform. But the same feature also came with a difficult challenge: moderation. It will be interesting to see how ‘communities’ can be integrated with Twitter.  

Twitter’s recent update to its feature suite

The announcement of ‘Super Follows’ and ‘Communities’ comes at a time where most platforms are mimicking each other features. In 2020, Twitter had announced a Snapchat-like-stories feature called “Fleets”. The company also acquired Revue, an email newsletter service, and is expected to announce a subscription-based newsletter feature. Twitter has also been improving its Spaces feature which was launched in December 2020. ‘Spaces’ is very much akin to the new Clubhouse platform where users are given audio-based rooms to interact with each other.  

In its announcement yesterday, Twitter also shared how the company is eyeing to have more than 315 million DAUs (Daily Active Users) on its platform. This will be 20% growth from the 152 million DAUs it reported in quarter 4 of 2019. 

Moreover, the company also announced that its next goal in terms of revenue earning is to earn $7.5 billion or more by the end of 2023. In 2020, the company reported having earned $3.7 billion as its annual revenue.  

In closing, 

As Twitter sets its eye on gigantic revenue numbers, why should you not dream? 

If you’ve got a perfect idea, an interesting niche, or a hilarious tweet in mind, just keep perfecting it for a little bit longer. With its recent announcement, Twitter has promised that the reward for those ideas and tweets can be more than just retweets or likes.