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Twitter announced thousands of dollars in ad revenue payouts made to users due to a program that allows them to benefit from their posts, sparking celebrations and cheers for Elon Musk, who took over the platform in October.
Users on Thursday afternoon said they received notifications from Twitter that they received payouts as their share of the platform's ad revenue in replies to the content they created or posted. The company said that the highest payout—$37,000—was made to Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus, known on Twitter as Shibetoshi Nakamoto.
Twitter announced on Thursday that it's sharing a portion of its ad revenue generated from creators' reply threads to help users "benefit" from their posts. The payouts are received via the Stripe account used to register for Creator Subscriptions.
"So far many creators are pleased with the size of the payouts and are saying Twitter's creator programme is more generous than they expected. This is shaping up to be a win for keeping creators happy with and engaged on Twitter," the social media company said.
The payouts come shortly after social media giant Meta launched Threads, a new platform that, some experts told Newsweek, has the potential to become Twitter's next top rival as it capitalizes on users critical of Musk's platform since his takeover.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that Threads, which has a similar interface to Twitter, reached 10 million sign-ups in the first seven hours of its launch. Threads users can write, repost, quote and like posts the same way as on Twitter. Posts can be up to 500 characters and include photographs, links, and videos up to five minutes long. A post on Threads can also be shared to other platforms through the messaging app.
Before the launch of Threads, Twitter announced some restrictions on its users, as it limited the number of posts they can view per day. Musk said the limitations are meant "to address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation."
"We've applied the following temporary limits: - Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day - Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day - New unverified accounts to 300/day," he said this month.
Despite Threads' rising popularity and concerns about Twitter policies, some users on Musk's platform were thrilled about the company's ad revenue sharing system.
"Twitter Monetization For Creators Is REAL. I just received my first ad revenue payment from Twitter. 1st check = $10K (!!!) I would typically never share personal financial info but creators need to know that @elonmusk means BUSINESS supporting the creator economy," said media personality Benny Johnson.
Book author Ashley St. Clair wrote, "FULL TRANSPARENCY Minutes after Twitter announced ad revenue payouts, I received this saying I'll be paid $7,153 For reference, I had 328 million tweet impressions in the last 28 days These are awesome payout numbers & I encourage every single creator to share their content here."
"Thanks Elon! And these are just for the ads in replies. Video ads are going to be worth a lot more. As Twitter continues to improve, advertisers are going to want a slice of the Internet traffic, ad revenue will go up, and we will get paid more. This is only the beginning," said Twitter user Clandestine.
Who Qualifies for Twitter Ad Revenue Sharing?
To benefit from Twitter's ad revenue program, users are required to have over 5 million tweet impressions each month for the last 3 months. Users also must have an active subscription to Twitter Blue/verification for organizations. The revenue share will backdate to February 3, when Musk first announced the monetization program.
"Revenue payout to content creators will be cumulative from when I first promised to do so in February," Musk tweeted on Thursday.
Other monetization creator standards include being 18 or older, having an account that has been active for at least 3 months, living in a country where the monetization program is available, having a complete profile and verified email address, and being owner of a profile that hasn't been designated to a state-affiliated media account.
Though Twitter might profit from this program, its 5 million tweet impressions requirement might drive small creators away, as it seems to benefit top creators who have higher engagement, according to The Tech Outlook. This means that some users might be tempted to post specific content that generates more replies from other users, which could include controversial tweets.
Newsweek has reached out to Mike Horning, associate professor of multimedia journalism at Virginia Tech's School of Communication, via email for comment.
About the writer
Fatma Khaled is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. politics, world ... Read more