Twitter and Substack have had a long-going battle, with each party striking the other constantly. In recent news, Twitter strikes back by announcing that it will revamp the entire platform. Surprisingly enough, the updates sound like Twitter will turn out to be another version of Substack.
CEO Elon Musk is planning to allow Twitter users to monetize their followers and create long-term content.
The update was announced on Thursday, which further revealed that Twitter Blue users could post tweets as long as 10000 characters with both bold and italic formatting.
The monetization update was informed by Musk in a separate announcement. He further added that this feature would be available on an “application basis”.
The long-format content is only available for Twitter Blue users for now.
In his words, this update will allow all the users “to offer your followers subscriptions of any material, from long-format text to hours-long video”
The good news for the creators is Twitter claimed that it wouldn’t keep much of the money they make for the first year at least. After the first year, the fees for Android and iOS users will drop by 15%. Additionally, Twitter will charge a small part of their earnings depending on the total volume.
A little digging up revealed that the monetizing feature on Twitter isn’t a new idea. In fact, in 2021, Twitter rolled out a new program called Super Follower. The only difference today is the newly added category of long-format content.
It was further found that users don’t need a Twitter Blue subscription to monetize their accounts. Sources revealed that a reporter on Twitter was told they were eligible to monetize their account even though they didn’t subscribe to Twitter Blue.
However, if a creator is planning to monetize their Twitter account, they might need to create longer content, making signing up for Twitter Blue inevitable.
More Context On The Feud— Twitter Vs Substack
For those who haven’t heard of Substack, it’s a paid platform for bloggers and podcasters to monetize their content through subscriptions. Here is a quick rundown of the feud between the two companies.
- It all started when a Twitter user tried to share a Substack link on Thursday but was met with the message, “Twitter has unexpectedly restricted access to embedding tweets in Substack posts,”. On the same day, Substack founders took to their Twitter accounts to assure their users that the issue had come to their notice and would be investigated.
- On Friday, Substack founders expressed discontent over Twitter deliberately blocking Substack links and said their writers deserved better.
- Reports suggest that Twitter’s discontent with Substack arises from the fact that Musk has been trying to collaborate with writer Bari Weiss to work on a new project called “The Twitter Files”. However, Bari Weiss has already signed up with Substack and has a massive following there.
- On Saturday, Musk took to his Twitter account to deny these allegations and said that Twitter has never intentionally blocked Substack links. In fact, Musk launched a counter-allegation that suggested that Substack was trying to download a massive part of Twitter’s database to create their own clone version of Twitter in the form of Substack Notes.
- The latest move is made by Twitter who’s now trying to bring Substack features to Twitter
Looks like the war is far from over. Twitter also limited user interaction with Substack content on Twitter. Reports suggest that even a few days ago, if you searched for Substack on Twitter, you’d be shown results for “newsletters”. This made it hard for Twitter users to see Substack content on the platform.
Substack founders are yet to share their views on Twitter’s latest announcement.
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Johnathon Serna