If you’re a social media connoisseur like we are, you know that the only constant each social media platform has is that it is constantly changing. With the exception of Twitter of course, which has managed to remain relatively the same throughout the years, sticking true to its original mission. That is of course until last week, when Twitter announced a couple of substantial changes to its platform, drastically changing the way its users interact with the platform and each other.
Curious what these updates are? Let us break them down for you.👇
Communities
Similar in style to Facebook Groups, Communities allow Twitter users to create and join groups around specific interests — like plants, cats, cars — allowing them to see more tweets based on those topics. Groups have been widely successful on Facebook (not considering the moderation issues that have arose), and will be very helpful on Twitter as well, especially for businesses. Raise your hand if you have ever tweeted something and felt like you were just shouting into the void. 👋 Communities will help new users get started without the struggle of the platform’s current open-ended nature.
Image via Twitter
Super Followers
In addition to Communities, Twitter also plans to release a new payment feature called Super Followers. This feature will allow Twitter users to charge followers in exchange for access to additional content. This content could be as simple as bonus tweets, a newsletter, or even access to a community group. In the mock-up below, Twitter shows an example of charging $4.99 per month to receive a number of perks. Similar to platforms like Patreon, Twitter believes this feature will allow content creators to get paid directly by their fans. Other platforms like YouTube and Facebook have recently released direct payment options like this. Twitter has not announced at this time whether or not they will be taking a cut of the money.
Image via Twitter
