The pace of Twitter’s new product announcements shows no signs of slowing down. Support for tipping with crypto, NFT authentication, and plans for more experiments geared to provide more information about a conversation to individuals just joining in were among the new efforts announced today by the firm. In a few weeks, the business plans to launch its own creator fund, which will provide audio makers with financial, technical, and marketing help.
While Twitter hasn’t revealed specifics about the fund’s size or expected reach, in terms of creator participants, it’s a clear shot across the bow of Clubhouse, whose own creator “accelerator” promised to connect participants with brand deals or $5,000 per month during their participation in the program.
Similarly, Twitter sees its creator fund as a way to help creators get started with audio productions on Twitter Spaces, rather than compensating them for the content they create, as some competing funds do on Facebook, Instagram, Snap, and elsewhere.
Esther Crawford, Twitter’s Product Lead for Creator Monetization, explained, “The purpose of it truly is to bring that technical and marketing knowledge.” “We see it as a sort of band-aid solution. We’d like to bring these people on board for further long-term monetization features. But we want to give them a lift right now,” she explained.
Spaces hosts will also be able to record and replay their programs — a move likely aimed to combat the danger of competitor platforms that highlight recording as a significant differentiation. This will launch in a “few months,” the business added. Twitter also unveiled a few new products and updates to previously released features today.
One of these is a new feature that will allow its app to better support artists working with NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, which are a type of digital asset that can be certified and kept on the blockchain. NFT markets such as OpenSea, Rarible, Foundation, SuperRare, and others are now selling NFTs of artists’ work. Twitter says it will investigate NFT authentication functionality “soon.” This would allow NFT developers to link their crypto wallets to Twitter in order to track and promote their NFTs. This strategy is still in its early phases since Twitter has yet to explain how it would function.
The business said it was experimenting with different approaches for making authorized collection authors stand out more aesthetically — potentially with a profile badge or a different-shaped avatar.
When asked for more information about its broader NFT roadmap, Twitter remained silent. Support for Bitcoin tipping is another new feature in the crypto world. Twitter’s “Tip Jar” function, which allows users to give and receive one-time contributions via third-party services including PayPal, Venmo, Patreon, Cash App, Bandcamp, and others, was first offered as a beta product in May.
