Elon Musk says that Twitter will start sharing revenue from reply-thread ads with creators who are subscribed to Twitter Blue Verified. (According to Musk, “legacy” verified marks will be going away in “a few months.”) He says the program will start today, though there are currently very few details about how it will work.
Currently, subscribing to Blue will cost you $8 per month if acquired directly via its site or $11 per month from Apple’s App Store or Google Play, but the cheapest version is an annual subscription directly from Twitter for $84. It’s unclear how many viral tweets it would take to pay that off, but it could be difficult given Twitter’s rocky relationship with advertisers right now.
While this announcement is relatively out of the blue, Musk has been talking about creators a lot (including mentioning a revenue share earlier this week). One of the perks of Blue is the ability to upload higher-quality and longer videos, and the company has recently added a view count to tweets. (Interestingly, on the Android version of the app, they’re labeled as “verified views.”)
While some Twitter users have had options to monetize the platform for a while via its Tips and Super Follows features, an ad revenue-sharing program would be new for the site. It would also help Twitter compete with platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, which have systems for paying creators directly, either through funds or ad splits.
However, there’s still a lot of information that we don’t know, and so far, none of Twitter’s support pages or accounts for creators have posted any details for a program that is apparently starting today.
