Tech CEO says Twitter needs to go ‘all in’ on subscriptions – MarketWatch

“The first thing we want to focus on is that economic incentive to people who are contributing to Twitter,” Dorsey, who is also the CEO of the digital payments company Square
SQ,
-3.07%,
said at the conference. “That can come through a regular subscription, that can come through content unlock, that can come through tipping. There is a host of things and right now we are just studying and prioritizing what those things look like.”

Twitter
TWTR,
-2.48%
has been free to join since it was founded in 2006.

The company has already begun making moves in the subscription world. In January, Twitter acquired newsletter service Revue, which allows creators to get payments directly from their Twitter audience — Revue takes a 5% fee for paid newsletters.

See also: Disney+ is finally streaming ‘The Muppet Show’: Here’s why some scenes — and whole episodes — are missing

Some think Twitter should make subscriptions a major component of their business plan, including Dan Burkhart, the CEO of Recurly, a company that provides billing subscription services for companies. Burkhart told MarketWatch he thinks Twitter should go “all in” due to the company’s unique structure.

“The top voices on Twitter end up driving orders of magnitude more traffic engagement than the rank and file,” Burkhart told MarketWatch. “When you have a product like that with such vast reach…with so many pockets of interest groups that create the peaks and valleys that is far and wide, you have the ability to stratify your sources of revenue.”