Twitter is yet again rumoured to be exploring new ways to make more money from the site and they are quite interesting.
According to Bloomberg, Twitter is building a subscription product to reduce its dependence on advertising.
The company is exploring tipping which involves allowing people to pay the people they follow for exclusive content. Another way they are exploring to generate revenue is charging for the use of services like Tweetdeck which was hinted 4 years ago. Tweetdeck is used by companies to manage their social media accounts and Twitter is considering to charge for having a dashboard for viewing multiple feeds and overseeing different accounts.
However, I find it interesting that Twitter is also considering charging people for “advanced features” like “undo send” or profile customization options. The undo send feature is not clear whether is for the DM or for regular tweets in the timeline. Twitter users have for a while now lamented about the lack of an edit button or “undo send” button and it seems like Twitter was withholding this to charge people.
As of Q3 2020, Twitter revealed that they had 187 million daily users of which a majority were outside the US. Their Q3 revenue totaled $936 million as per their investor release which was 14% up YoY. For this alternate revenue stream to be effective, they will have to convince a huge chunk of that user base to pay for the service.
