Information wants to be free, but food isn’t
Twitter just announced that their new Super Follows subscription service is now live, after a beta period of a few months for some.
Super Follows allows content creators on Twitter to offer perks and bonus content to paid subscribers. Subscriptions can run from $2.99 to $9.99 a month, and it’s the content creator who largely gets to decide how much to charge and what is or isn’t free to the public or reserved for subscribers.
I’m torn about this. On the one hand,
Depending on how this plays out, this could mean that fewer people will be getting the information they’ve come to depend on related to news, both late-breaking and in general. Want to read that? You have to pay $2.99.
It could mean that influencers or well-known personalities interact differently with the public. One great thing about Twitter is you can interact with everyone (yes, I know that’s a down side too!) Instead of spending time writing tweets for, or replying to, people who aren’t subscribed, they’ll naturally (even if it’s not consciously) start to focus more on subscribers.
On the other hand…
Content creators big and small spend hours every month, or week, or even every day, producing content for free on Twitter in an effort to keep the algorithms going in their favor to show their content, to seem or stay relevant, or to try to draw a bigger audience. In many cases, independent YouTubers, podcasters, bloggers, and reporters don’t have a traditional full-time job with a salary.
Having a subscription option gives content creators on Twitter a way to earn some money from the work that hundreds or thousands of people are consuming, instead of Twitter being the only one making money off of their labor (from the ads that show when you’re looking through your timeline, etc.)
People who want to support creators have an easier way to do so. in theory, it could make publishing content via Twitter a more viable option for content creators to get their voice and content out there, allowing them to focus more on creating content and worry at least a little less about finding a way to make ends meet
I guess we’ll see how it plays out. It’s not something that I’ll have to worry about anytime soon, as I alluded to in a tweet today. 😀
If you don’t yet, you can follow me on Twitter, too: https://twitter.com/EclecticMisc. Have a good one!
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