Twitter announced a new feature they are calling Super followers during an investor event. There’s not a very much detail or any real idea about when this new feature will be launched but the core idea is really compelling.
In a nutshell this is finally a way for content creators to make money on twitter. There has been ways to do this on platforms like YouTube and more recently Substack but twitter only ever really made money for twitter. And if we are honest they never really made that much of it for themselves either.
I don’t expect this to bring millions more users to the platform but it does actually fit quite well with the audience of folks who do use twitter a lot today. The big idea is that you can charge users to be super followers of yours then tweet out some of your content only for your super followers. Simple but also brilliant. Content creators don’t really have to do anything different and for most casual twitter users nothing changes.
For years folks have been wanting twitter to start charging users for access and get rid of all the ads. The problem with that idea are obvious, even if you keep a free ad supported tear all of your advertisers best targets would have bought there way out of ads making twitter and even less attractive place for advertisers. Remember App.net, for a second there folks really though it was going to be the thing to save us but sadly it couldnt last and it closed way back in 2013 I believe.
The beauty of super followers is that ads are still there, this is just another way for die hard users and fans to get EVEN MORE CONTENT.
I love it, but knowing twitter’s pace of adding new features we’ll be luckily if this hits private beta sometime in 2027.