Elon Musk once again shook the foundations of the social media space with a massive announcement, saying that content creators on Twitter will start getting paid a portion of the ad revenue generated by the ads in the replies to their posts.
Making that huge announcement, something he has suggested will happen since he took over Twitter, Elon first said, “In a few weeks, X/Twitter will start paying creators for ads served in their replies. First block payment totals $5M.”
He then clarified who would be eligible for the advertising revenue share program, saying, “Note, the creator must be verified and only ads served to verified users count.”
In a few weeks, X/Twitter will start paying creators for ads served in their replies. First block payment totals $5M.
Note, the creator must be verified and only ads served to verified users count.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2023
Replying to Elon, people had numerous questions about how the program would work. One account, for example, was curious about both what sort of impressions would lead to those ads serving and thus creators getting paid, and what analytics would be available to those content creators, presumably so that they can tailor their tweets toward ones that earn them more. “Will creators be able to track how many ads appear in our replies? And what is the system for getting ads in your comments? Is it based on views? Interactions? Or do you advertisers have to seek out individual creators to advertise on their page? So many questions,” Clandestine asked.
Numerous other accounts were supportive of the idea. Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton, for example, said, “Justice!” while another account said, “This is exciting news. One step closer to making a career on Twitter.”
On the other hand, one account was not so excited about the news, asking, “can we opt out of this? not a fan of the malincentives of audience capture etc.”
Other accounts noted that, given the small amount of money involved in the program relative to how many verified posters there are on Twitter, the payouts will likely be quite small for most people.
Still, the move is an exciting step for Elon and Twitter toward becoming a one-stop shop for content creators that want to make money off of getting their message out there.
Elon initially announced the ad revenue share idea in February of this year, saying, “Starting today, Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads.” Adding to that, he noted then too that only verified accounts would be eligible, saying, “To be eligible, the account must be a subscriber to Twitter Blue Verified.”
To be eligible, the account must be a subscriber to Twitter Blue Verified
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2023
Unfortunately, nothing came of that until now, and even now the program’s start is still an indeterminate number of weeks away and important questions, such as what is required for one to get the payout (is linking a bank account necessary, for example), remain unanswered. But, YouTube and others have figured out how to let content creators monetize their content posted to the platform, so Elon and his team will surely come up with something that works. We’ll just have to wait around to see what happens, paying attention to the platform the whole time, which is certainly what Elon wants.
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