Shubham Sawarkar
Twitter has rebranded its “Super Follow” feature to “Subscriptions,” which allows users to subscribe to individual accounts for exclusive content. Twitter owner Elon Musk announced the feature on Thursday, stating that it can be found in the “Monetization” section of settings. Subscriptions offer similar features to Super Follow, such as exclusive tweets, subscriber-only Spaces, and special subscriber badges, with Twitter planning to include newsletters and other features as bonus content in the future.
The move to Subscriptions is seen as a direct shot against newsletter platform Substack, which recently announced its Twitter-like “Notes” feature. After Substack’s announcement, Twitter limited engagement with Substack’s Twitter account and even throttled Substack links, although those restrictions have since been lifted. The possibility of newsletters being added as bonus content by Twitter is ironic, considering it shut down its own Revue newsletter tool three months ago.
Twitter users can offer monthly subscriptions at $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99, with creators able to earn up to 97 percent of the revenue (via the Subscriptions help page) if they make under $50,000 in lifetime earnings, and up to 80 percent once they exceed that amount. Twitter won’t keep any of the money creators earn through subscriptions for the next 12 months, according to Musk (as he wrote in a tweet).
To be eligible to offer subscriptions, users need to have at least 500 followers, posted 25 tweets in the past 30 days, or be at least 18 years old. While creators in the US can start selling subscriptions, users in the US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia can purchase subscriptions on iOS, Android, and Twitter’s website, although they can’t view subscriber-only content from the web.
It’s worth noting that Musk’s move to Subscriptions seems like a simpler approach compared to the promises he made to creators in February, where he stated that Twitter would start sharing ad revenue with creators for ads that show up in their reply threads, which still hasn’t happened. He’s also hinted at establishing a creator fund and providing higher compensation for written and video content.
