Twitter is considering adding a paid membership option for business users in a bid to arrest slowing revenue growth and a sharp decline in its share price.
The micro-blogging service plans to offer an advanced Tweetdeck experience with more powerful options for businesses and power uses under efforts to broaden its revenue base in view of dwindling advertising income.
Tweetdeck’s interface is a bit more powerful than the regular app, and the potential paid version would feature a “new, more enhanced version of Tweetdeck,” a spokeswoman told Reuters. For an unspecified fee, users could access “more powerful tools to help marketers, journalists, professionals, and others in our community find out what is happening in the world quicker.” Additionally, there would be no ads.
“We regularly conduct user research to gather feedback about people’s Twitter experience and to better inform our product investment decisions, and we’re exploring several ways to make TweetDeck even more valuable for professionals,” Twitter said in an email to selected users.
“This premium tool set will provide valuable viewing, posting and signalling tools like alerts, trends and activity analysis, advanced analytics, and composing and posting tools – all in one customisable dashboard.
“It will be designed to make it easier than ever to keep up with multiple interests, grow your audience, and see even more great content and information in real time,” Twitter added.
Twitter acquired TweetDeck in 2011 from developer Iain Dodsworth, but hasn’t done much with it since as far as expanding features and capabilities. This could be a welcome option for users for whom Twitter is a critical part of doing their job.
In the fourth quarter of 2016, the social network reported the lowest revenue growth since it went public four years previous, and revenue from advertising fell year-over-year. The company also said that advertising revenue growth would continue to lag user growth during 2017.
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desperate move. I am announcing the death of twitter
they will get bought out
Absolutely! I was being dramatic 😉
They are too large too go as they have critical mass, and their information holdings are too valuable
Twitter needs the money to hire more censors. Just like YouTube and Facebook. As the MSM is slowly going out of business their owners need new ways to control what we know and what we think.