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Cash for your tweets: Twitter to launch Super Follows

Ready to start earning cash for your tweets?

Twitter announced two new features on Thursday to help its creators earn money directly from followers:

  • Super Follows: Users can charge Super Followers for exclusive access to content, subscriber-only newsletters, community groups, and supporter badges.

  • Communities: Similar to Facebook Groups, Twitter's Communities feature will allow users to create and join a group on a particular topic. Communities will offer “Super Followers” a space to convene with other like-minded folks.

Why indie hackers should care: The new products represent Twitter’s most substantial moves to capitalize on the $10 billion creator economy.

Twitter goes indie: These developments come on the heels of Twitter's recent acquisition of newsletter tool Revue which enables users to create and offer paid newsletter subscriptions within the app. It also is secretly testing its audio-product Spaces,, which appears similar to the wildly successful audio-based social app Clubhouse.

Twitter Super Followers

Bottom line: Twitter has long helped users to build social capital on its platform. But to convert that following into financial capital, users had to move their fans off the platform and onto their newsletters, products, or websites. With Super Follows, Twitter captures the latent value of its platform and helps creators profit in the process.

You'll have to wait: Twitter has yet to announce a launch date for the products or what percentage cut it’ll take from creators’ Super Followers.


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Wall Street gives Twitter two thumbs up

Market reacts: Twitter’s stock (NYSE: TWTR) rose 12 percent Thursday after it announced plans to double its revenue and create 315 million monetizable daily active users by end of 2023.

The path to profitability: In its last earnings report, Twitter disclosed $3.7 billion in 2020 revenue and 192 million monetizable daily active users in the fourth quarter of 2020. Presumably, Twitters’ creator-oriented products are a part of its optimistic financial outlook to double revenue in two years.

The creator wave: While it’s been more proactive, Twitter’s efforts to capitalize on the creator economy are in line with other social media and tech companies:

  • Facebook is reportedly building a newsletter tool for writers, publishers, and content creators. It is also creating an audio product rivaling Clubhouse.

  • In July 2020, Tik Tok announced a $200 million fund to pay its top creators.

  • In 2019, GitHub began offering the Patreon-style tool Sponsors, allow the developer-focused community to generate revenue on their open-source projects.

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