Twitter teases its upcoming ‘premium’ service, which it plans to release globally

Would you pay for an upgraded Twitter? That’s a question Twitter will soon answer when it rolls out a new subscription service that will present users with an expanded feature set available only to paid subscribers. This is a different offering than Twitter’s previously announced Super Follow subscription plans, which will allow users to subscribe to individual creators for access to exclusive content. Instead, the new subscription service will target Twitter’s power users who tweet frequently enough or otherwise engage with the product to the point that they’d be willing to pay to do even more.

Twitter has already broadly hinted at its forthcoming subscription plans, having told Bloomberg in February that it would “research and experiment” with ways to diversify its revenue beyond advertising in 2021 and beyond. Twitter ads are 85% of revenue, but Twitter often faces slowing or flat user growth. That has led the company to consider new ways to extract more money from existing users. It told Bloomberg this plan “may include subscriptions” and other approaches that gave businesses and users access to “unique features.”

It also reiterated its interest in subscription products during its Twitter Analyst Day later that same month, when it said it would “experiment with subscriptions.” And its Twitter Investor Relations account tweeted in March that it would “test subscription products in public.”

Leave a Comment