Twitter has announced that it's exploring a new subscription service, meaning the app soon won't always be 100 percent free to use. While the Twitter experience that people are familiar with won't start costing money any time soon, Twitter is working on adding new, premium features that'll be locked behind a fee.

Like any company, Twitter exists to churn a profit and make money. Similar to other social networks like Facebook, it currently does this primarily through advertising. Companies pay Twitter to place ads on the app/website, Twitter uses its collection of user data to target these ads to the best demographics, and the appropriate users then see said ads. It's a business model that resulted in Twitter generating advertising revenue of $899 million in Q1 2021, making up the vast majority of its $1.04 billion total revenue for the quarter. While the ad business is working, that's not to say Twitter isn't regularly exploring new ways to further monetize its service.

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In the not-too-distant future, Twitter will radically shake up the social network with its first paid subscription. On May 4, 2021, Twitter announced that it had acquired Scroll — an app that allows people to pay a monthly fee to remove ads from their favorite online publications. Users get to pay a small fee to have a much better reading experience, news outlets have the potential to make more money than they would from online ads, and it ends up being a win-win for everyone involved. Scroll has been offering this service since January 2020, but now that Twitter owns it, its technology (and subscription model) is going to be integrated directly into the social network.

Twitter's Subscription Service Could Include Multiple Perks

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In its blog post announcing the Scroll acquisition, Twitter says that it plans to "include Scroll as part of an upcoming subscription we're currently exploring." While full details of the subscription have yet to be revealed, Twitter suggests it'll work basically the same as Scroll currently does. The company says, "picture getting access to premium features where you can easily read articles from your favorite news outlet or a writer’s newsletter... with a portion of your subscription going to the publishers and writers creating the content." While that's no different than the Scroll service many people have been used to, the interesting tidbit is how Twitter hints at multiple features being included in the subscription — calling out "premium features."

Other features that will be offered in that service are anyone's guess, but one of the most obvious additions could be removing advertisements in the Twitter app itself. The Twitter experience today is filled with tons of sponsored and promoted posts. If Twitter is working on a paid version of its app, removing in-app ads (along with ads in news articles) would make it considerably more appealing. The subscription could also add exclusive features to things like Twitter Spaces and Fleets, but that's pure speculation this early on.

Twitter has yet to announce pricing or availability for this subscription model, but it does sound like it could be coming soon. Twitter has already temporarily paused new sign-ups for Scroll, and once the acquisition is complete, it'll "be working to include their product [Scroll] into our subscription plans and prepare to grow Scroll's publisher network."  The future of a paid Twitter is on the horizon, and the purchase of Scroll just put it one step closer to becoming a reality.

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Source: Twitter