Related reports indicate that Twitter is preparing to create a subscription product to reduce its reliance on online advertising revenue to maintain its operations.
Twitter's main revenue also comes from targeted advertising, but recent market analysis data shows that Twitter's advertising revenue growth rate has gradually slowed down. It currently only has about 0.8% market share in global digital advertising, far lower than the service advertising market share of online social platforms such as Facebook and Snap.
If Twitter can adopt the new subscription usage model, it is expected that it will be able to add a new source of revenue and may also be able to break away from its operating model that relies on advertising.
However, given that Twitter is currently free to use and relies on targeted advertising exposure as its revenue source, if it were to adopt a paid subscription model, it would inevitably face some usage challenges, such as users may request not to see any ads, or be provided with service features that were previously unavailable.
In related news, Twitter has begun to develop different subscription usage models. One of the services is codenamed "Rogue One". There is also a paid service that allows users to donate to the people they follow in exchange for exclusive content. Similar features have already appeared on services such as Twitch and YouTube. Twitter may also hope to use this to allow creators and Internet celebrities who frequently share content on the platform to obtain more sponsorship and obtain a share of the profits.
In addition, Twitter may also provide specific functions through subscription, such as using the full Tweetdeck platform service or providing the function of retrieving sent messages.
However, Twitter's subscription service is clearly still a very early planning project, and there is no specific implementation plan yet. Twitter is also still studying whether users can accept such an adjustment and how to differentiate it from the current free usage model after the adjustment.
WhatsApp, which used to be billed annually, also maintained its service operations through subscriptions in the early days. However, after being acquired by Facebook and becoming a subsidiary service, WhatsApp is now provided completely free of charge.
