Why 'Super Follow' is about to change the fabric of the internet

Twitter and Facebook have announced a raft of new creator monetisation initiatives that could change the very fabric of the internet - not just for their users but for all of us. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at these updates and ask “What took them so long?” But also what this means for the future of the web. Spoiler alert, it might not be great.

If you like what you read or hear today, there's even more on my YouTube channel which focuses on how we can use technology to better our lives. Please check it out!

Paywall everything

In July of 2021, Twitter will officially turn 15 - perhaps that’s why we’ve been subjected to so much teenage angst over the past four years. But while platforms like YouTube and even Twitch have enabled creators to directly monetise their audiences for years, writers on Twitter still have to take their followers elsewhere to generate an income.

That is until now. Later this year, Twitter is set to introduce ‘Super Follow’, a new feature that will allow creators to hold certain tweets behind a paywall. Users will be able to access these premium tweets by paying a subscription directly to the creator, with Twitter presumably taking some revenue off the top. Facebook meanwhile, will be introducing ‘Monetization tools to build successful individual websites and businesses, starting with subscriptions’, as well as ‘the ability to create Facebook Groups and nurture a community of readers’.

On the face of it, this is nothing new. Creators have been using sites like Patreon, Substack and Only Fans to reward their supporters with extra content for some time now. But by building this functionality right into their own platform, Twitter and Facebook are taking the paywall mainstream.

The problem with those other platforms is that they require the user to get over additional effort, and in the case of Only Fans a degree of stigma, which no longer has to be the case if they can simply sign up with the stroke of the thumb. That loss of friction will lead to an entirely new wave of creators who are able to monetise their content much sooner in their lifecycle. Sounds great - but what exactly took so long to get to this point? The answer lies in advertising.

The cookiepocolypse

In fairness, Facebook Gaming has allowed creators to monetise their videos since 2018 and it saw significant revenue growth in 2020. There’s also this little thing called Instagram that we can’t forget in a hurry. However, the majority of Facebook and Twitter revenue still comes from advertising and this has insulated both platforms from the need to ask users to pay directly since their inception. It’s estimated that 43% of all digital ad revenue goes to Facebook alone.

And there’s a reason for that. By developing a vast and sophisticated set of user profiles across the web and allowing marketers to target them at an incredibly nuanced level, Facebook has become perhaps the most effective advertising tool that’s ever existed. So effective, in fact, that users and regulators have begun pushing back against targeted digital advertising with so much rigour that the model is now under threat.

Until recently, many users were completely unaware of how and when their data was being collected around the web and even when they were, it was difficult to do anything about it. Only in the past couple of years have lawmakers and internet browsers, such as Safari and Firefox, taken the matter into their own hands, forcing advertisers to offer users more choice through legislation like GDPR and automatic cookie-blockers.

The latest bombshell to be dropped on the advertising industry came earlier this year, when Google announced that its own browser, Chrome, would no longer be supporting third party cookies either - a move that will massively limit the ability of companies like Facebook and Twitter to offer targeted advertising products, potentially driving more advertisers back into traditional media like TV, unless they go the other way and put it straight into influencers.

If you want to be more cynical about Facebook’s move to build creator monetisation into its groups and pages, you could make a good case that this is about even more than just a hedge against advertising dollars. Regulators in Australia recently enacted a bill that forced both Facebook and Google to compensate media owners for the use of content on their respective platforms. A move that particularly riled Facebook whose initial response was to block all major news organisations from publishing on its platform - the Big Tech equivalent of taking its ball and going home.

Facebook loosened its stance eventually and brokered a deal with the media industry but could it be that by encouraging creators to monetise their content on Facebook, it’s actually seeking to cut out the need for publishers in the first place?

A new challenge for the open web

With so much disruption happening in the digital world, it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’re entering a new phase of the internet. Internet 3.0 if you will. Historically, whenever the internet has gone through a major shift, the big losers have been the middle-men. We’ve seen it with record labels and film studios but in fact, most traditional publishers are still recovering from the emergence of digital media over a decade ago. 

And while it might sound innocuous, the ‘Super Follow’ has the potential to eliminate the need for large media houses entirely. Already, the top earners on paid-newsletter platform Substack are posting earnings of up to $1 million dollars from an audience they’ve developed on Twitter and Facebook. Now, Substack is reportedly signing well-known journalists on huge advances and tempting them away from the very newspapers and broadcast networks that made them famous.

Social media has long outgrown the reach of traditional media - if it can offer its creators more money too, as well as ownership over their audience, then all media outlets have left is the credibility you gain by being associated with them. It makes you wonder whether the future of traditional media outlets is to serve as an incubator for up and coming journalists who eventually spread their wings and monetise themselves on the likes of Twitter. This is heresy to most journalists but as The Athletic showed in 2019 when they hoovered up virtually all of the UK’s top sports writers, the draw of a larger paycheck and complete creative freedom can prove hard to resist.

Recently, The Telegraph caused uproar across the industry with suggestions that it could trial a payment system, whereby reporters would get compensated according to the financial impact of their work. Rightfully, people were aghast at the idea that important journalism could go amiss because writers could earn more from celebrity clickbait. But it seems inevitable that someone will have to pretty quickly find a more ethical pay structure that can rival what creators are set to earn when the likes of ‘Super Follow’ becomes more established. You only have to look at YouTube, whose creator economy is already further developed, to see just how large a company can be built on the back of social media.

What this means for the rest of us

But that’s only half of the story. Ultimately, regular social media users will be the ones who foot the bill for all of this. Sure, we’ll have infinitely more choice about who we share our hard-earned money and data with but as we’ve learned from streaming services, subscriptions have a habit of piling up and putting a dent in your wallet.

The real loss will come in the fact that the internet 3.0 will become an ever more fractured place to be. We run the risk of creating a world wide web that’s much more of a local affair, where access to the best and the brightest is limited to those who can afford it. Let’s face it, these platforms have never been great at regulating hateful content and misinformation either - if ‘Super Follows’ become just another way to hide and fund fascism, then we’ll rue the day we ever allowed them to happen.