Twitter apparently plans to expand its own network through a subscription platform. A job advertisement for the previously unknown Team Gryphon provides clues to this.
Twitter is causing speculation. After the social media company published a job advertisement, in which an employee is looking for a team named Gryphon, industry experts suspect that Twitter is working on a new subscription platform. The reason for this is the wording in the job advertisement. Twitter is looking for a senior full-stack software engineer. This is to build a subscription platform that can be used for other purposes in the future. It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that the Gryphon project is a paid extension of the social network. Because according to the job advertisement, the new Twitter member works closely with the payment group of the network.
How this cooperation will look like is still unclear. However, speculation about a new source of income for Twitter has already increased the value of the company’s shares by twelve percent.
Gryphon: Exclusive Twitter content for a fee?
It would not be the first time that Twitter tries to find new sources of income and uses a subscription model. In 2017, the short message service was already testing a similar system in which users received detailed analytics insights for a fee. However, experts now suspect that Twitter wants to offer the paying users rather exclusive content with the new platform extension. A model similar to that of Facebook’s fan subscriptions is conceivable. Here, users conclude a paid subscription and receive exclusive content from the subscribed Creator, such as discounts or behind-the-scenes insights.
Such a model could also make sense for Twitter. With a subscription system, celebrities and creators could better control who replies to the tweets and who they want to interact with. With a subscription, users could better get in touch with their favorite accounts without getting lost in the crowd. Subscribers could also be offered exclusive advance information on a new music album or feature film, for example.
At the moment it is still hard to imagine someone paying for reading celebrity tweets, for example. It remains to be seen whether Twitter will be successful with such a subscription model. And at the latest when the work of the Gryphon team is ready for publication.