Elon Musk will share Twitter advert income — however solely with creators who pay for Twitter Blue

Elon Musk says that Twitter will begin sharing income from reply-thread adverts with creators who’re subscribed to Twitter Blue Verified. (According to Musk, “legacy” verified marks can be going away in “just a few months.”) He says this system will begin right now, although there are presently only a few particulars about the way it will work.

Presently, subscribing to Blue will value you $8 monthly if acquired straight through its website or $11 monthly from Apple’s App Retailer or Google Play, however the least expensive model is an annual subscription straight from Twitter for $84. It’s unclear what number of viral tweets it could take to pay that off, nevertheless it may very well be tough given Twitter’s rocky relationship with advertisers proper now.

Whereas this announcement is comparatively out of the blue, Musk has been talking about creators a lot (together with mentioning a revenue share earlier this week). One of many perks of Blue is the flexibility to add higher-quality and longer movies, and the corporate has just lately added a view depend to tweets. (Apparently, on the Android model of the app, they’re labeled as “verified views.”)

Whereas some Twitter customers have had choices to monetize the platform for some time through its Suggestions and Tremendous Follows options, an advert revenue-sharing program can be new for the positioning. It will additionally assist Twitter compete with platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, which have techniques for paying creators straight, both by means of funds or advert splits.

Nevertheless, there’s nonetheless a whole lot of data that we don’t know, and to this point, none of Twitter’s help pages or accounts for creators have posted any particulars for a program that’s apparently beginning right now.

For instance, is something past a Blue account required to start out getting a share of the advert income? YouTube has particular necessities for engagement and follower depend that it’s important to meet to hitch its companion program. Listed below are another questions that, to this point, don’t appear to have solutions given the shortage of help documentation concerning the characteristic supposedly launching right now: