Twitter announced a big upcoming feature: the ability for users to charge their followers for access to additional content.
The payment feature is called Super Follows and it will allow Twitter users to charge followers and give them access to extra content; that could be access to a community group, bonus tweets, subscription to a newsletter, or even a badge indicating your support.Twitter showed an example in a mockup screenshot where a user charges $4.99 a month to receive a series of perks. Twitter sees this as a way to let publishers and creators get paid directly by their fans.
In recent years, Direct payments tools have become increasingly significant for creators. Patreon has been massively successful and other platforms such as Facebook, Github and Youtube.Twitter will presumably take a cut — the company has been hinting at subscriptions features that would offer it a new source of revenue — though it doesn’t appear to have said yet what that fee will be.