Twitter starts paying Twitter Blue creators who earned 5M+ impressions per month for three months a revenue cut from the ads beside the replies to their tweets
Creators can now make money on Twitter. My take 👇 … Bluesky: David Chen / @davechen.bsky.social : If this story is to be believed (big if. Huge if), then literally just spending time on Twitter and seeing ads might potentially help put money into the pockets of far-right personalities. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Mastodon: @cspam@mastodon.cloud : The people who scream for answers on why they're not getting engagement are definitely going to calm down now that they think they're missing out on direct payments — [image] Twitter: @twitter : Surprise! Today we launched our Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program. We're expanding our creator monetization offering to include ads revenue sharing for creators. This means that creators can get a share in ad revenue, starting in the replies to their posts. This is part of our... Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @imPenny2x Exactly. And those who try to game the system in ways that materially diminish value for other users of this platform will get dinged. Elon Musk / @elonmusk : @Scobleizer You're welcome! This is not in response to competitors. I announced we would do this in February. Sorry it took so long to roll out. It is only right that content creators are rewarded for their contributions. Parker / @pt : Twitter rev shares will incentivize engagement-farmers to hit 5M impressions so they can get paid. And those payments will come from subscriptions by boring people paying for placement in the replies Twitter is slowly transitioning from social network to paid content farm. Parker / @pt : Another case of Twitter leadership cargo-culting features w/o understanding context. The best creators will go where the audience is bc that maximizes overall income & rev shares make that sticky. Ashley St. Clair / @stclairashley : 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... [image] Aaron Levie / @levie : Wait, we could have been paid to be tweeting all this time? Linda Yaccarino / @lindayacc : It makes a lot of cents to create here! 💰 Ed Zitron / @edzitron : Twitter Blue made $11m in 3 months and apparently they're paying out $5m to creators cumulatively from February. Elon Musk is the business genius. This is his masterwork https://techcrunch.com/... [image] @jason : The ability to grow an audience, build a brand, AND make money at the same time is what drove YouTube to millions of creators & billions of users — twitter will do the same this decade. Who will be twitter's equivalent of MrBeast? @jason : WTF @TWITTER?! YOURE PAYING ME $50,000 A YEAR TO TWEET? [image] @taylorlorenz : @Jason No, because YouTube is transparent with its policies and onboards everyone who meets clear and transparent metrics. Haven't seen that yet from Twitter! I'm curious though, given Twitter's struggles to retain ad revenue, how sustainable u think this program will be for creators? @jason : @TaylorLorenz I think you mean revenue sharing, like YouTube does. Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : My Twitter account generated 61 million impressions since Feb 3rd, 2023. My Stripe account is ready and waiting for my ad revenue share, Elon. Sahil Lavingia / @shl : What if Tweeting got you equity in Twitter, and that equity entitled you to dividends? 🤔 @mosquitocapital : GREAT move by Twitter. Love it. Some questions about the incentive structure (especially re: ragebait) but at first glance this is a massively good idea, and it feels good to finally not have to pick apart all the ways something they're doing is terrible https://techcrunch.com/... @dexerto : Biggest payout for Twitter's Ad Revenue Sharing seen so far is over $100,000 [image] @eve6 : We live in a world where writers are facing financial precarity on the picket lines in an upward battle for fair pay and this guy gets a 25k check for tweeting stuff like “i think both sides have a point” Matt Binder / @mattbinder : on Twitter, Mr. Beast is worth just the same as one (1) Krassenstein [image] @taylorlorenz : Musk resorting to essentially bribing big accts to stay on Twitter @rmac18 : imagine being one of twitter's landlords and seeing your money went to a krassenstein brother https://twitter.com/... @josephpolitano : Considering Jason is a massive account and incredibly prolific Tweeter and he only made $840 a month from his share of Twitter ads ($4,200 is cumulative since Feb, not monthly as he thinks), it is going to be extremely difficult to make a living on this program @pitdesi : Twitter paid out 5 mos of earnings to folks they like with large followings. I think Jason's earnings are ~$10k/yr not $50k. Competition is great for consumers! (I think this is possibly a response to Threads) Robert Silverman / @bobsaietta : Paying far right freaks, scammers, and blithering idiots to post. I'm sure advertisers are thrilled 🙄 [image] Karl Bode / @karlbode : it truly is the golden era for worthless bullshit Ian Zelbo / @ianzelbo : I'm at 100,000,000 + impressions since February and haven't received an email from Twitter about ad revenue... :/ Jake Kastrenakes / @jake_k : one thing about creators is that they love surprises and uncertainty regarding their paychecks @huegolden : Translation: if a blue check tweet has a lot of engagement, they will get paid for that! Do not dunk on them in the quotes. Take a screenshot, block the “creator” and make any comments you like from your own page. Please share 🙂 Gergely Orosz / @gergelyorosz : This is a smart move from Twitter. Rolled out to select group at first (I'm not in that group) This will be a differentiator amongst social media networks, as only YouTube has a similar ads revenue share approach (though it is even more explicit there, how it works) @levelsio : Also just got this $3,899 from Twitter ad revenue No idea for what time period it is though, a month or a few months? Thanks @elonmusk [image] Tom Warren / @tomwarren : Twitter is starting to share a portion of ad revenue with creators. This has long been promised, so it'll be interesting to see what the cut of revenues are actually like [image] Matt Novak / @paleofuture : Benny's “I would typically never share personal financial info” raises a rather obvious question: Is Twitter giving these people an additional incentive to share these dollar figures with their followers today? [image] Threads: Derek Thompson / @dkthomp : The financial situation at Twitter is a cavalcade of yikes right now - ad sales down 60% - the company is behind on rent and withholding legal payments - Musks's big Twitter Blue initiative is... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Twitter had previously outlined a plan to share revenue from ads in reply threads with Blue subscribers, but without operating details. This is the move from that earlier revenue-sharing promise to actual creator payouts.
The program makes reply-thread advertising a direct creator incentive rather than solely a platform revenue source. Its later global rollout for eligible users shows this was becoming a formal monetization feature, not a one-off payment.
First-order effects
- Eligible Twitter Blue creators meeting the stated impression threshold can receive a share of advertising revenue associated with replies to their posts.
- Twitter ties a creator payout opportunity to both Blue membership and sustained audience reach, giving high-volume accounts a new reason to prioritize replies and impressions.
Second-order effects
- Creators near the threshold have a stronger incentive to optimize for distribution and engagement; critics in the coverage specifically flag engagement farming and the potential amplification of polarizing accounts.
- Advertisers gain a closer financial connection to the conversations surrounding their placements, making brand-safety concerns more consequential for Twitter's ability to fund the program.
Third-order effects
- If payouts become a durable creator tool, social platforms may compete more directly on monetization mechanics that reward attention, not just on audience reach or subscription features.
- The program illustrates the trade-off in attention-linked payouts: they can retain influential creators, but may also increase pressure to govern low-quality or divisive engagement without undermining creator incentives.
The trend: Social platforms are turning advertising revenue shares into creator-retention systems, while confronting the moderation and advertiser-safety costs of paying for engagement.