Twitter’s Recent Ad Revenue Share Program is Near Launch

One other key element of Elon Musk’s Twitter 2.0 vision is getting near launch, with its ad revenue share program for tweet replies seemingly now set for live deployment.

As you possibly can see in this instance screen, pulled from the back-end code of the app by researcher Yaroslav (and shared by T(w)itter Every day News), creators will soon give you the option to join Twitter’s recent ad revenue share program, which can see revenue generated from ads displayed of their tweet replies shared with them, providing one other monetization opportunity within the app.

Twitter CTO Elon Musk announced the approaching program earlier this month, with Twitter Blue subscribers in a position to sign-up for a share of any revenue generated from ads shown of their tweet responses.

Which is useful, in that it’ll give people more ways to earn a living from their Twitter presence, though as we noted on the time, it could also incentivize more incendiary, divisive tweets, with a purpose to spark more responses, and thus, more opportunity for ads to be displayed in reply chains.

Research has shown that high arousal emotions, like anger and happiness, are the important thing drivers of comments on web posts, with negative emotions driving more virality – meaning that one of the best strategy to maximize the quantity of comments and replies is to post things that make people offended enough to reply.

Twitter’s program can be restricted when it comes to who can join (Blue subscribers only), and where ads are shown, with only ads served within the replies of verified users counting towards this recent revenue pool that can then be shared with creators.

And with only around 0.3% of Twitter users paying for Twitter Blue, that’s a comparatively limited field of those eligible for this system. But still, it’s higher than nothing, and together with subscriptions, it does provide one other potential pathway for people to earn a living just from their tweets.

Twitter’s hoping to win over more creators with higher revenue share and posting options, with a purpose to maximize its opportunities, and get more content flowing through the app. Elon Musk has repeatedly stated his intention to compete with YouTube with Twitter’s own video posting options, while Twitter’s also now added long-form posts (as much as 25k characters) and recent text formatting options, to supply more ways for creators to maximise their in-app presence.

It stays to be seen whether Twitter will give you the option to supply comparable revenue opportunities, with YouTube and Meta still providing more viable, invaluable pathways on this front, while it’s also unclear how Twitter users will reply to longer-form content within the app.

But Elon’s keen to construct in additional functionality, as a way to maximise Twitter’s utility, and transform it into an ‘all the pieces app’ that can serve a broader purpose for users, and supply more value than the Twitter of times past.

It’s an ambitious aim, but that, I suppose, is what Elon makes a speciality of. And while much of Twitter’s next-level growth strategy stays vague, it’s adding more functionality and options, at a rapid rate.

This element, inside itself, isn’t going to make anyone wealthy, while as noted, it could also result in negative engagement. But it surely’s one other step within the Twitter 2.0 process, as Musk works to rebuild the worth of the app.