Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) shares jumped 8% after a job posting hinted that the company was developing a subscription platform for its social networking service.
Twitter is has a team developing a subscription platform
According to the job listing, the company is looking for a software engineer to join the Gryphon team that is developing the subscription platform. The team will be working closely with Twitter’s payments team. The job listing gave scanty details, and a company spokesperson asserted that it was just a job post and not a product pronouncement.
Like most social networks, Twitter generates most of its revenue from targeted ads on the platform. Therefore, having a paid subscription services could bolster its revenue source beyond data licensing and advertising. However, it is not clear how the company plans to implement the offering. Twitter May consider implementing a Patreon or Twitch-type subscription model where users will subscribe to personal accounts in a particular way.
Twitter surveyed in 2017 on improving TweetDeck
Interestingly, this is not the first time the company is considering having a paid subscription services. It previously conducted a survey in 2017 about offering paid subscription services to power users. The survey sought to establish what a paid offering for the company’s TweetDeck app could look like with users paying for breaking news alerts, new analytics, and information about what followers are tweeting.
The company’s spokesperson indicated that they surveyed to ascertain if there would be interest in a new version of Tweetdeck. The spokesperson added that the company regularly conducts surveys to collect feedback regarding Twitter experiences. Equally, the survey helps advice on product investment decisions, and Twitter has been exploring ways of enhancing Tweetdeck to be valuable for power users.
Interestingly Twitter has revised the job positing and removed the mention of a possible subscription feature and the Gryphon team developing it. The listing indicates that the social media company is seeking an Android engineer to collaborate with back-end engineers to develop components that allow piloting to offer the best experiences.
