Twitter acquired Revue late last month, which is a service that makes it easy for anyone to start and publish editorial newsletters. This move was seen as their big push to compete with Substack which has attracted writers and editors from huge publications as a way to monetize their newsletters.
Well, Twitter has moved quickly to integrate their new acquisition on Twitter.com. If you check the options button (…), you will notice the newsletters option under Moments. This new tool will allow you to create a new way to reach your audience on Twitter.
According to Twitter, this tool is pretty handy for creating newsletters. You can compose and schedule newlsetters. You can import mail lists as s well as embed tweets. As a direct answer to Substack, you can earn money from paid subscribers as well as analyze engagement on your newsletters.
There are way more features on this integration. You can have a landing page, import/update/add/delete subscribers, add links from anywhere on the web and also build on Revue’s features using their API. Your newsletters can also be published to Medium, WordPress and more which is quite cool.
They also have Revue Publisher for publications and creators who run multiple newsletters in one account. This is great for those big publications who run multiple newsletters generated by people from the same organization.
Twitter said that they will make Revue’s Pro features free for all accounts and lowering the paid newsletter fee to 5%. Substack charges 10% in comparison and this would entice more writers to sign up for Twitter Newsletters.
The quick integration by Twitter to integrate Newsletter creation on the web app should worry Substack. Twitter has a bigger audience and more importantly, has a diverse range of writers and publications who would willingly use this service to earn income. However, Twitter doesn’t have the best record with acquisitions since they both discarded Vine and Periscope after purchasing them but this newsletter tool can become a hit.
