Is Twitter working on a paid version of the social media service? The company recently posted several job listings concerning a mysterious “subscription platform.”
“We are a new team, codenamed Gryphon,” the company writes in one of the listings for a software engineer. “We are building a subscription platform, one that can be reused by other teams in the future. This is a first for Twitter!”
The Gryphon team will be made up of web engineers who’ll collaborate with the company’s payments teams and Twitter.com. A second job listing on LinkedIn for the project goes on to say Gryphon will “rebuild some of Twitter’s services to produce a subscription management platform.”
Twitter is remaining mum on the project. But in 2017, the company began exploring how to offer a paid version of the service that would nix the ads. Subscribers would also get access to additional features, such as analysis on activity trends and more powerful posting tools, making it an attractive offering for marketers, journalists, and other influencers.
The job listings are already sparking users to imagine what a paid version would offer. Would the much-request edit button finally arrive?
It’s also possible the subscription platform will be focused on a client base that already pays the company: advertisers. Although popular as a social media service, Twitter has struggled to significantly boost its financial performance in recent years. During the first quarter, the company’s revenue grew a mere 3 percent year-over-year while posting a net loss of $8 million.
Not helping the matter is the ongoing pandemic, which is causing businesses to spend less on advertising. So it’s possible Twitter is working on the new paid product to diversify its revenue streams.
