Re/code reports that sources within Twitter confirmed that the company was removing ads from the timelines of some of its most influential users. Twitter has remained mostly quiet about what constitutes a VIP, however, telling Re/code that “the company doesn’t select the no-ad or low-ad group purely by star power, but by a variety of criteria, including the volume and reach of the tweets they generate”. What is the reason behind such a move by Twitter? However, it seems that the micro-blogging website has suddenly made a decision to only earn from some of its user-base.
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That is according to Peter Kafka at Re/code, who spoke with sources at Twitter.
It’s not altogether clear if eliminating ads is really going to encourage more tweets and retweets among a particular set of users, though if the effort continues then the suggestion will be it’s working.
Instead of giving high-profile users a free pass on adverts, another revenue strategy could be to start charging all users a subscription, although this is not something which Twitter has considered publicly. For such folks, Twitter is free of ads, or almost free of ads, which in turn will definitely improve their overall experience.
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Kafka himself is verified and has a little over 70,000 followers and says he appears to be in the ad-free group. Twitter generated over $2bn (£1.4bn) in revenue in 2015 and nearly all of this came from adverts. The best that the firm could manage was this statement: “We’re constantly looking at constraints and adjustments to optimise which ads are shown and how often”.
