Monetizing the content that each user offers on a platform is becoming more common every day. In this case, Twitter, trying to reduce its dependence on advertising revenue, announces two new functionalities that will come to the platform throughout this year, including "Super Follow", which will allow users to earn income from exclusive content.
As reported by Twitter itself, additional content could include such as bonus tweets, access to a community, videos, subscription to a newsletter or even a badge indicating that you are subscribed to a "channel".
The price for the Super Follow is $ 4,99 per month and it would allow content creators or any subscribed user to charge their followers for exclusive content. An example of what the functionality is like can be seen in the following screenshot, where a user Super Follows Regina Lennox in exchange for the different benefits that are indicated.
Exploring new funding opportunities from other users such as Super Follow will allow content creators to be directly supported in their work by their audience and will encourage a continuation in the creation and publication of content
On the other hand, the other new functionality that will come to the platform are the Communities (or "Communities"), which they work in a similar way to Facebook groups. Communities introduces the ability to create new interest-based groups. Twitter announced them exemplifying with Social Justice, Cats, Plants and Surfing.
Twitter would also be planning a Safe Mode optional that would be proposed automatically when Twitter systems detect that a tweet could be receiving spam or abusive responses. Once this mode is activated, it would directly block accounts that were breaking the rules of the community itself.
In the presentation with the analysts and investors, Twitter did not announce a roadmap of when specifically it would launch the functionalities, but as they indicated, these should be in the next few months so we hope that before the end of 2021 they should be among us.
Without a doubt, the Super Follow will bring a lot of tail. Some professionals such as freelance journalists who carried out their work through Twitter, may monetize their work in this way, however, it must also be analyzed since with this measure, it may not be possible to reach such a wide range and we will have to find the best balance between the interests of each one.