Twitter, is planning to roll out a new tool that will allow media publishers to charge users for access to individual articles. While it’s not known if the social website has negotiated any sort of arrangement with individual publications, Musk said this feature is rolling out in May.
According to Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, the move should be a “major win-win” for both organizations and readers.
“Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per-article basis with one click,” he said in a tweet. “This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per-article price for when they want to read an occasional article. Should be a major win-win for both media orgs & the public.”
Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per article basis with one click.
This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article.…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2023
This new development follows Twitter’s announcement of new monetizing features for content creators.
The social platform said that creators across the globe can now sign up and earn a living on the platform with Twitter Subscriptions (previously referred to as Super Follows) which you can find in the “Monetization” section of settings. According to Musk, all proceeds will go to content creators and Twitter will keep nothing for the first twelve (12) months.
“You will receive whatever money we receive, so that’s 70% for subscriptions on iOS & Android (they charge 30%) and ~92% on the web (could be better, depending on payment processor),” he said.
While Musk says that Android charges 30 percent on subscriptions in the first year and 15 percent thereafter, according to Google’s support page, the company charges 15 percent on subscriptions from the start.
Since taking over Twitter six months ago, Musk has been bringing in changes to the platform in an attempt aimed at boosting revenue at Twitter and one of these was the revamping of Twitter Blue, the company’s paid verification service which costs $8 (approx. UGX30,000) through the web or $11 (approx. UGX41,000) in-app. Organizations seeking verification pay a monthly fee of $1,000 (approx. UGX3.7 million) and $50 for each additional affiliate sub-account. Twitter also shut down almost all free access to the Twitter API and introduced a new fee structure for API access that could cost some enterprises as much as $42,000 per month.
