Twitter Announces New Paid Subscription Service 'Super Follow'

Twitter, whose larger plans for the future include doubling revenue by the end of 2023, has announced a new feature called Super Follow that will give users the option of providing exclusive content to their followers for a price.

The Patreon-esque feature, per a rundown of Thursday’s Analyst event from 9to5Mac, will see Super Follow subscriptions that run $4.99 per month with a “cancel anytime” option. A supporter badge, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and exclusive content of varying forms are among the highlights of the new feature.

It’s easy to imagine the Super Follow rollout being a highly impactful update to the Twitter experience, particularly in terms of sex workers, independent journalists, and other public figures who could potentially (and quickly) leverage it into a paywall of sorts for tweeted content.

Other updates to the Jack Dorsey-fronted social media service announced on Thursday include the Facebook Groups-esque Communities and a new Safety Mode which will automatically detect accounts that act abusively or “spammy.”

Per CNBC, a recent SEC filing saw Twitter stating its ambition to have 315 million monetizable daily active users (and that aforementioned doubled revenue) by 2023. Following circulation of the filing, Twitter’s stock jumped more than 5 percent. In the fourth quarter of 2020, Twitter reported 192 million monetizable daily active users.

Recent months have been pivotal for the platform, which in January announced the permanent suspension of single-term POTUS Donald Trump’s verified account due to what it determined was a risk of “further incitement of violence” following the deadly Capitol riot.