Products like Clubhouse and Twitter’s “Super Follows” offer a new kind of engagement
New digital media products are focusing on low-volume, high-attention rather than high-volume, low-attention feeds.
Twitter this week laid out a roadmap for future products and features. The new feature that got the most attention was Super Follows, which will let users charge for premium tweets or content, perhaps including newsletters (Twitter's recent aquisition of Revue, a newsletter platform that competes with Substack). While Twitter didn't mention this, I could also envision Super Follows complementing Twitter Spaces, its new Clubhouse-like audio chat product.
Wheter or not it takes off, Super Follows signifies a shift in Twitter's strategy - and points to a broader shift in digital media. It shows that Twitter sees a future in business models other than targeted advertising and in formats other than the algorithmic feed. Specifically, it shows Twitter looking to facilitate direct, intentional relationships between creators and their most loyal fans.
