🗝️ Twitter Pays Out to Power Users

NEWS

Twitter's Cash-For-Tweets Strategy

While Threads was stealing the limelight during its launch, Twitter delivered a strong counter-move to keep its power users on the platform.

Twitter has started to pay out ad revenue for the ads served in a user’s Tweet replies feed.

To qualify you need to be:

• Subscribed to Twitter Blue or a Verified Organization.

• Have at least 5M impressions on your posts in each of the last 3 months.

• Pass a human review test

In total Twitter paid out $5M, with Tech Crunch reporting individual payouts of up to $30,000. While they are some big headline numbers, payouts are cumulative based on Tweets since February.

Why it matters

We didn’t get a cage match but Musk vs Zuckerberg in the boardroom is much more intriguing.

Twitter needs the big names to stay on the platform and this is a timely update to incentivize its power users to stay put.

Twitter under Musk is still far from being profitable.

Last week Musk replied to one user: “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.”

HEADLINES

Threads is working to quickly enable ‘paid partnership labels’ to allow brands to sponsor posts. Brands can’t run ads because Meta wants to focus on getting toward a billion users before considering monetization through ads. In the interim Threads will get Instagram’s ‘Branded Content’ features so brands can properly disclose any paid partnerships with creators. (Axios ↗️)

TikTok moves into music streaming. Users in Brazil and Indonesia now have access to TikTok Music, described as “a new kind of service that combines the power of music discovery with a best-in-class streaming service”. While in the U.S., TikTok is testing a new feature that shows "Hot 50" and "Viral" music charts. (Business Insider ↗️)

Google's AI chatbot, Bard, is expanding to Europe and Brazil after its March launch in the U.S. and the UK. The expansion was delayed due to privacy concerns raised by the EU data regulator. Bard now has new features worldwide, such as being able to speak responses, respond to images, and adapt its tone. (BBC ↗️)

Amazon announced a record-breaking Prime Day. The first 24 hours of its Prime Day event marked the “single largest sales day in company history”. The two-day event was the “biggest Prime Day ever.” In total consumers in the U.S. spent an estimated $12.7 billion. (Tech Crunch ↗️)

SNIPPETS

🛍️ TikTok is testing a Shop feed (alongside For You, Following)

🇪🇺The European Parliament is auditing Google for misleading YouTube advertisers

📺 Roku has a new deal with Shopify to buy products with your TV remote

💳 Shopify stores can offer interest-free payments to customers

🧠 Elon Musk has a new company, xAI

Thanks for reading + have a great week!