Twitter's 'Super Follows' feature to help creators monetise content

Looking beyond promotional tweets, social networking site Twitter is rolling out a 'Super Follows' feature to help users monetise their content. 

Those selected to participate in the 'Super Follows' test group will be able to post subscriber-only content, which will be visible only to the people who pay/subscribe to access the tweets. 
  
"Twitter's slow and gradual move to content-based monetisation is a positive step away from the prevalent advertising-backed monetisation. In some instances, advertising formats could be deemed intrusive. As such, it makes sense for Twitter to experiment and nourish a new freemium culture, through Super Follows, which incentivises creators, and the creative economy. This is a business model that has been adopted, to varying degrees of success, by other players in the app economy," explains Prabhu Ram, Head - Industry Intelligence Group at CMR.

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Twitter believes the subscribed content that could gain traction can be unscripted thoughts, personal replies only for super followers, ideas and opinions with extra tweets. And basis the content the Twitter profile will upload, they will be able to choose to charge between three available price points - $2.99, $4.99 or $9.99, per month. 

"A model such as 'Super Follows' forces a habit- either pay or miss out on some premium features," avers Ram. 

Twitter has also clarified that users will be eligible to earn up to 97% of revenue on their 'Super Follows' subscription, after in-app purchase fees, until they reach $50,000 in lifetime earnings across all Twitter monetisation products. 

And to receive the payout, there is a minimum of $50 threshold. If the Twitter profile fails to meet the monthly threshold, the balance will be rolled over to the next month. 
  
While it looks like a great content monetisation tool, industry experts believe that in the era of the creator's economy, Twitter is a little late to join the party. 

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Honey Singh, a digital Entrepreneur, who has co-founded multiple digital consulting companies in India says, "But it is better late than never when competing with rivals like Google (Youtube), Facebook, and TikTok- platforms that also assigned more than $1 billion funds individually to promote and lure good creators." 
  
Singh adds, gated content under 'Super Follows' will solve a couple of problems Twitter is facing - exclusive content, revenue sharing and building a creator-first community, to name a few. 

"It is still a question if this will also be open for "adult content" as Onlyfans rivals. Considering Indian policies, Twitter will not touch any other controversy in India," he notes.
  
The initial version of Twitter's 'Super Follows' feature has been rolled out only for US-based creators, to begin with, and anyone on iOS in the US and Canada will be able to subscribe. 

While Twitter plans to expand the rollout globally on iOS to subscribe in the coming weeks, the company hasn't disclosed the India launch for the feature yet.