Elon Musk says that Twitter will start sharing revenue from reply-thread ads with creators who are subscribed Twitter Blue Verified, The Verge reported. 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 few details about how it will work.
According to The Verge, 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 is 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.
The Verge noted that there is still a lot of information that we don’t know, and so far, none of Twitter’s support pages for accounts or creators have posted any details for a program that is apparently starting today.
Mashable reported that Musk announced via his Twitter account that the company would begin sharing ad revenue with content creators on the platform as of today. He said creators will get paid for the ads that show up in replies to their tweets.
In a follow up post, Musk snuck in an added caveat: The creator has to first sign up for a paid Twitter Blue subscription ($8 on the web, $11 on iOS devices) before they can take part in the ad revenue share program.
Mashable also reported that Musk did not provide any details aside from the Twitter Blue requirement. There has been no additional information about this program that ostensibly starts today – not from Musk, and not from any of Twitter’s official accounts.
If you are a creator, Mashable pointed out, you should be extremely wary of this right now. Twitter has not shared what the revenue share is, such as what percentage each side would be getting. The company did not explain if the pay would be based on impressions (i.e. how many times an ad is viewed), or if it would be based on how many times an ad was clicked on. Would the revenue share actually be engagement, such as how many interactions, such as likes or retweets, an ad receives? Who knows?
Personally, I think Elon Musk’s idea of monetizing creators through Twitter Blue Verified is very flawed. As The Verge and Mashable reported, there is no information about how it works or what creators will be paid.
This comes after Twitter announced it would “no longer support free access to the Twitter API”. There was a lot of pushback from disgruntled app creators. As I suspected, if Twitter couldn’t push the app creators into paying for the API, it would target users and attempt to extract money from them. That’s what’s happening with Twitter Blue Verified.