This, net negative profit of a digital product, is why Twitter starts to charge individuals and fire its employees.
Using ‘creator economy’ to double the revenue, adding other monetization channels to a product that has been primarily relying on ads, reducing spend, are approaches a biggest capitalist would do to optimize profit on a content platform. It’s the most obvious number for them to care about after all. What other things can be set as a numeric metric in our world? Number of followers? That also means money nowadays.
Twitter was founded without a monetization strategy of crowd-sourced content. Meanwhile, Weibo, considered the knock-off of Twitter, monetized everything from the get go. They’ve been charging people to unlock certain functions, including the edit feature. Now Twitter seems to be copying Weibo back.
What I found most uninspiring is products that acquired 100M to billions of users primarily make their money by selling ads, instead of monetizing on why their users use them. One may argue it’s smart, but it’s a betrayal to the people who helped them build the products.
If they so cared about free speech, run a non-profit.
#monetization#creatoreconomy#TwitterLayoffs#Twitter
Art by Physicist Kitty Yeung 