Amidst its internal struggles and an intense competition with Threads, Elon Musk’s Twitter began to step up competition by paying creators a share of the ad revenue earned from ads served in the replies to their posts. That step-up is now gaining further momentum as Twitter is tweaking the revenue share policy and increasing rate limits.
Of course, this was only for verified creators – those who subscribed to Twitter Blue for a monthly or annual subscription, and have earned more than 5 million tweet impressions each month for the last 3 months. By setting a benchmark based on tweet impressions, Twitter ensures that creators have a significant reach and engagement, making the revenue-sharing program meaningful for both parties involved. Musk later added that ad revenue from profile page views will be shared to creators “soon” as well, and would include only views from verified accounts.
The payouts are significant – Musk says that the first round of creator payouts will amount to $5 million, and will be cumulative from the month of February onward. Nonetheless, several creators ran into problems, and Musk announced in a tweet that a prior policy – that prevented creators from becoming eligible for subscriptions if their profile featured “animals or fictional characters” (unless those were directly affiliated with the Twitter account’s brand or organization) – is being “deleted for now.”
Chief among the concerns was the exclusion of accounts featuring animals or fictional characters, unless directly affiliated with a brand or organization. Notably, the account “Battle Beagle” brought this issue to Elon Musk’s attention, tweeting a picture from Twitter’s help centre that clarified Twitter’s stance on the matter). Responding promptly, Musk declared, “Consider this silly policy deleted as of now.”
Twitter’s new revenue-sharing policy does open up new avenues for creators to monetize their content and earn a share of the ad revenue generated within the replies to their posts. In fact, some creators have already received substantial four or five-figure sums – TechCrunch reports that writer Brian Krassenstein (whose verified account has about 750,000 followers) claims to get paid $24,305 under this new policy. This financial incentive provides creators with tangible rewards for their contributions and encourages them to continue producing engaging and high-quality content, which is slated to attract more users (which goes on to benefit Twitter as well).
Twitter is also bringing some changes to the rate limits that had been imposed upon users – verified, unverified, and new alike – a few weeks earlier. They limited the number of tweets a user could view on the micro-blogging site – Musk later increased the limits to 10000 posts for verified accounts, 1000 for unverified ones, and 500 for new accounts. This time, Musk said that the social media company will be increasing the rate limit for verified accounts by 50%, which took effect in a few hours. This new change came in response to tweets from a Twitter user, who announced that they were hitting their rate limit frequently.
