Twitter May Launch Premium Paid Features And 'Tipping' For Exclusive Content

Twitter may eventually introduce premium paid features or other user-funded ways to reduce its ad dependency, according to sources. What kind of paid offerings may show up is yet to be seen, but the leak alleges multiple ideas are being explored, including one that may allow users to pay tips to creators for exclusive content.

The potential monetization plan comes from Bloomberg, which cites unnamed sources familiar with the matter. This is said to be an internal discussion at this point, with Twitter teams allegedly exploring different 'subscription offerings' — at least one of which is supposedly codenamed 'Rogue One.'

Under such a plan, Twitter may start charging a fee to access things like Tweetdeck and more advanced features, such as additional profile customizations or access to an 'undo send' option. Likewise, users may be able to tip the people they follow and get access to exclusive content in return.

The idea of premium, paid Twitter features isn't surprising — the company's CFO Ned Segal told investors last year that such a move would offer more consistent recurring revenue compared to ads, but also said that any such plans were very early in the exploration process.

Whether users will be willing to directly pay for Twitter features or services remains to be seen — power users may shell out for something like Tweetdeck if the price is right, but the average user may not be inclined to shell out a bit for special customizations. Still, there's a precedent for getting social media users to directly contribute funds: Reddit, for example, offers special badges that users can buy and gift to other users to highlight their posts.