Are you the kind of person that takes a great deal of pride in their Twitter account? You’ve got notepads filled with future tweets that you painstakingly craft for all those followers desperately anticipating your latest thoughts. Yet, for all that effort, you’re just not making any cash. Twitter has seen you and has decided that maybe all your hard work should be rewarded. That’s where Super Follows come in, a new feature that allows users to subscribe to Twitter accounts and gain access to a extra content.
Super Follows will now enable users to charge their followers an optional rate for features like extra tweets, a newsletter, access to particular community groups or even a badge to display on their profiles, as indicated by The Verge. It seems that users can set their own rate with the example of $5 being used in an example by Twitter which feels really expensive but some people really can’t get enough of the Hellscape that is Twitter. Presumably, Twitter will also take a cut of the cash being paid to creators but it has yet to confirm what that may be.
It’s ridiculous, we know.
Professional Twitter
Yet it also makes sense. As social media has grown into the unfathomable and terrifying beast that it currently is, it’s also offered some a new forms of entertainment; New creators often use sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as places to showcase their craft. That’s why platforms like Patreon have become so popular: They allow creators a chance to be supported directly by those that appreciate their art.
Twitter is one of the last mainstream social media platforms to offer this kind of support program; Facebook and YouTube both launched creator payment programs which have no doubt proved vital for many people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last night Twitter also announced that it would be bringing Communities to the platform which, from the sound of things, are just Facebook Groups, hopefully with less toxicity and nonsense conspiracy theories. These groups can be created around specific interests and users that join them will see tweets dedicated to the topics of the group. So if you’re a fan of something broad like video games or very specific like Gears of War, you’ll be able to join a group that should hopefully see more of your favourite topics cropping up in your feed.
There’s no confirmed launch date for either of these new features but one has to imagine they’ll be implemented rather soon.
Source: The Verge