What are Super Followers? Twitter’s new feature, briefly explained

Twitter thinks your tweets – or at least some of them – might be worth something. By a virtual event for investors Thursday, the company announced that it plans to debut a pay-per-post feature called Super Follows, in which users will be able to pay the people they follow for their best tweets.

With Super Follows, Twitter will enable users to monetize content that makes them exclusive to certain followers. Sample screenshots issued by the company show that the payment scheme can take different forms. For example, a follower may pay a few dollars a month to a creator they follow on Twitter to access the user’s exclusive newsletter or to view special tweets that are only available to Super Followers. They may also be able to join a specific group or access a badge indicating that they support the creator.

The idea that you would pay someone for their tweets may sound far-fetched, but a Twitter spokesperson told Recode that the goal is to reconsider the incentives of our service. ‘The premise seems to be basic that this pay-for-mail feature will help build more specific communities around specific topics.

Another change coming on Twitter: a group-like tool called Communities. We do not know much about this feature yet to come – Twitter says more information will come later this year – but the idea seems to be a more private and more controlled way for communities to gather outside of public view on Twitter.

‘[I]” It can still be difficult to find people who share your interests in focused conversations and connect directly with them, ” a company spokesman told Recode. “This year, we’re making it easier for you to discover, participate, and shape conversations with communities that share your interests.”

None of the newly announced features of Twitter are currently available, but the company says it will release more information in the coming months. Yet Thursday’s announcement is a sign that Twitter wants to be more than an incredible public online discussion space and that the company is moving towards the smaller “micro-communities” that form organically on its platform.

After all, anyone can jump on Twitter to see the latest news in the world, but someone is also on the site because they follow a certain set of users and influencers, whether they post about Tesla or Taylor Swift.

The advent of Super Follows and Communities comes when Twitter moved to mimic closed features available on other platforms. Late last year, Twitter introduced ‘Fleets’, Snapchat-like stories that are disappearing and only available to followers. The company is also in the midst of expanding its new Spaces tool, small sound-based rooms that function much like the new Clubhouse app. And, in the footsteps of services like Substack, Twitter bought the e-mail newsletter service Revue earlier this year and is working to integrate subscriber-based newsletters directly via their public Twitter accounts.

Twitter’s recent moves also indicate that the site hopes to add more layers to its historic public platform. All indications are that a user with a particularly promising tweet by the end of 2021 will have much more control over the audience that can read it, from people who can charge the content, to sharing the message in a more private community to even place it in a short-lived fleet.

The move to more closed content means that Twitter will also face more challenges, such as spreading misinformation and harmful (or even dangerous) content that can occur in private online spaces. (After Fleets debuted, some have pointed out that the closed and fleeting nature of the content could make it easier to spread misinformation.) It’s also not clear how the addition of more payment-based components will affect the famous free platform.

Meanwhile, if you have a perfect message in mind, Thursday’s announcement indicates that it might be worth holding on to it a little longer. The reward can be more fruitful than just “Likes” and retweets.

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