First Twitter came for Clubhouse with Twitter Spaces, now the social media giant has come up with what has been dubbed a potential “Patreon Killer” with Super Follows.
Twitter announced two upcoming features Thursday, Feb. 25: Super Follows, which would allow users to pay to get access to additional content and Communities, which allows users to join communities around common interests. The former is akin to Patreon and the latter seems similar to Facebook Groups.
Twitter announced the new functions in an investor presentation Thursday, according to The Guardian. It delivers on longtime requests from the company’s stockholders for a subscription-based model.
“Why don’t we start with why folks don’t believe in us,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said at the start of Twitter’s virtual presentation. “It comes down to three critiques: we’re slow, we’re not innovative, and we’re not trusted.”
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The company expounded on Dorsey’s words and the upcoming Super Follows feature in a statement. “Exploring audience funding opportunities like Super Follows will allow creators and publishers to be directly supported by their audience and will incentivize them to continue creating content that their audience loves,” the company said.
Summarily, Super Follows “will allow Twitter users to charge followers and give them access to extra content. That could be bonus tweets, access to a community group, subscription to a newsletter, or a badge indicating your support.”
Social media users weighed in on the upcoming features, including Dare Obasanjo who said if properly rolled out the products could spell trouble for multiple social platforms.
“Twitter is enabling paid subscriptions via Super Followers which will enable restricting your audio conversations in Spaces, tweets and eventually newsletters to just your Super Followers. If executed well this unifies Substack, Clubhouse, OnlyFans & Patreon into one product,” Obasanjo wrote.
Others were not so optimistic when Brian Hollingsworth, the founder and director of HollingsworthAnd design agency polled users on whether or not they’d be willing to pay to view tweets.
“Ooof 90 percent voting for no thanks – wasn’t expecting such a unanimous decision! I think I’d use Twitter less if I was forced to pay for access to certain content,” @danibarkermedia replied.
