Twitter is one of the most dominant free networks, but it has only recently begun to offer payment capability. This provides one salient example of a creator platform that undersells the pitch. The company recently introduced the “Super Follows” feature, in which users can pay to receive bonus content from accounts they love. The service launched... See more
But Twitter isn’t very good at the business of being a social network. Twitter has long struggled to grow or monetize its user base. In 2019, Twitter made $3.4 billion from 330 million users. Facebook made $70.7 billion off of 2.5 billion users.
What was most interesting to me, though, was Dorsey’s comment about helping people manage paywalls. One of the biggest challenges to the subscription economy is the tension between leveraging social media to acquire new customers — which like social media itself, requires content that is free to access — and the fact that running a business means... See more