In Twitter’s latest appeal to one-up competitors, from Clubhouse to Patreon, the company announced today that it will begin rolling out applications for Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces.
Twitter first teased the Super Follow feature during an Analyst Day event in February. Super Follows allow creators on Twitter to generate monthly revenue by offering paywalled content to followers who subscribe to them for $2.99, $4.99 or $9.99 per month. To be eligible, users over the age of 18 need to have 10,000 followers and at least 25 tweets in the last 30 days.
Twitter will only take 3% of creators’ revenue after in-app purchase fees — but, on the App Store and Google Play, in-app purchase fees are 30%, which means that creators will take home about two-thirds of what their followers are paying. Once they exceed $50,000 of lifetime earnings on Twitter, the app will take “20% of future earnings after fees.” When combined with the 30% in-app purchase fee, that leaves creators with about half of their followers’ payments. Meanwhile, Patreon only takes between 5% and 12% of a creator’s earnings (it bypasses in-app purchase fees since it’s a web-based platform). While creators who primarily engage with their audience on Twitter might benefit from having a way to monetize without directing followers to another app, the difference in payout here is stark. Creators might not abandon their existing Patreon systems for Super Follows, but at the very least, this could offer a supplemental income stream.
“Our goal is to elevate people driving the conversations on Twitter and help them earn money,” said senior product manager Esther Crawford. “We updated our revenue share cuts after spending more time thinking about how we could support emerging voices on Twitter.”
Ticketed Spaces seem more promising though, since Clubhouse, Spotify Greenroom and other competitors don’t offer similar options yet (Discord is testing ticketed audio events on its Stage Discovery portal, but they aren’t out yet). Through Ticketed Spaces, users can set their ticket price anywhere between $1 and $999. Creators can also limit how many tickets are sold, which might incentivize someone to actually use the $999 ticket price for a one-on-one conversation with a celebrity (still… yikes?). Twitter will remind attendees that the Ticketed Space is happening through push and in-app notifications. Users over the age of 18 that have hosted three Spaces in the last 30 days and have at least 1,000 followers are eligible to apply for access.
Clubhouse and Instagram have features that let listeners tip speakers or award badges in a live audio space, but the apps don’t yet allow for advance ticket sales. Another way for top creators to make money on these apps is through Creator Funds. Spotify Greenroom and Clubhouse have both announced plans for Creator Funds, but it’s not yet clear how the earning potential will compare with selling access to Ticketed Spaces on Twitter.
This slew of updates to Twitter comes after activist shareholders attempted to oust CEO Jack Dorsey last year. Now, Twitter is rapidly adding new features and acquiring companies like Revue (a newsletter platform), Ueno (a creative agency) and Breaker (a social podcasting platform).
Applications to use Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces are only available on mobile (so, no avoiding the in-app purchase fees) and for people in the U.S. Currently, only iOS users can apply for Super Follows, but Ticketed Spaces applications are available on both iOS and Android. Twitter is adding a brand new Monetization button to the sidebar in the app, where users navigate to see if they’re eligible to apply to be part of the test groups for these features. These features will launch more broadly in the coming months.
Update 6/22/21, 2:48 PM EST with additional information about eligibility criteria for new features
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