Scroll

Posted on

A few months ago, when Twitter acquired Scroll, a New York-based startup, the only question that remained was how they would integrate the service into the primary Twitter offering. That question got answered yesterday when the company introduced Twitter Blue, a premium offering in its major markets, including the United States. (Twitter Blue was available in Canada and Australia as part of its iOS app.)

For $2.99 a month, you get access to ad-free and paywalled content. You can undo tweets and get access to many beta features, such as uploading longer-length videos. You can pin some private direct message conversations to the top of the “messages folder.” There are some other customization options as well on Twitter’s iOS app. However, it is the reading part that is the main show of this premium offering. 

***

When you subscribe — I did — on the web, you get an additional icon in the right-hand menu that says Top Articles. When you go to Top Articles, you see a list of much-shared articles shared by those whom you follow.  

I also like the “conversation” panel that opens up when you highlight the article before clicking on the link to read it off-Twitter. At present, the default timeline is articles shared over the past 24 hours. I would love to get the option to select eight, or 12 hours, as folks tend to share articles more frequently on Twitter. In short, the Twitter team has successfully integrated the old Nuzzel that came to Twitter as part of the Scroll acquisition. 

The ad-free reading offerings thus far underwhelm me — there were three articles in my entire 24-hour “top articles” timeline. They have agreements with quite a few big publishers, but they are the lowest common denominator publishers. If you happen to have specific interests or follow a narrower group of accounts on Twitter, you might be out of luck. For me, this lack of quality sources is the weak link in the new offering — but let’s hope they can overcome this challenge. 

Despite the shortcomings, I am willing to try this new offering, at least for six months. After all, like most of us, I don’t want to sign-up for individual magazine or newspaper subscriptions. I don’t want to deal with micro-payments for articles, newsletters, and other content worth our attention. It remains to be seen what percentage of Twitter users are more open-minded and equally open with their wallets.

After all, the bigger question remains unanswered: What percentage of 397 million Twitter users will pay $36 a year for these premium features. The revenues garnered from a million subscribers for the premium service will be a mere rounding error in the company whose revenues were $3.72 billion in 2020. So, success for Twitter Blue means many millions of subscribers. It won’t be easy — it is hard to get people to pony up for something they perceive they have been getting for free.

Nevertheless, Twitter should stick with it because, in time, people will start to see value in this premium upgrade. I like the new direction Twitter is taking. “In much the same way Spotify has become a place where people experience music, Twitter could be the place where we discover, share, and consume news and other written content,” I wrote in an essay, What Twitter can learn from Spotify, last year. 

Many of Twitter’s new changes, such as introducing newsletters and now the Twitter Blue, show that Twitter is finally embracing its destined place in the news & information ecosystem. 

November 10, 2021, San Francisco

Posted on

Twitter is going the way of subscriptions in 2021 — after buying Revue, the company today snapped up Scroll for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition is a smart move — it allows Twitter to play to its strengths — media and media distribution. 

Scroll is a prix fixe media buffet –for $5 a month, readers can view articles, ad-free, from about 300 odd media outlets. The $5 a month subscription is then shared with the publishers. Good idea, but as Scroll founder Tony Haile points out in his blog post announcing the deal, “we’re not moving fast enough.” 

A lot has to do with the media industry and its bureaucratic disfunction. The fact remains that destination viewing of media is becoming a habit only reserved for a fading generation of readers. Discovery, distribution, and consumption of media have taken on a different meaning. And believe it or not — Twitter is smack in the middle of this Venn diagram. 

Twitter, just by incorporating Scroll, can increase its footprint and impact on the media business.

Last year, I wrote a piece — What Twitter could learn from Spotify. In my piece, I outlined a strategy that would help Twitter reinvent itself but also help provide a vital lifeline for not only establishment media but also independent creators. But in doing so, I reasoned that 

Twitter has to be “willing to rethink its entire core application, jettison the past,” and only then can it “create a more relevant, robust, and financially rewarding future.” (I don’t want to repeat myself, so you are better off reading the earlier piece at your leisure.) 

With Spaces, Revue, and now Scroll, Twitter has started to think different — though if it will be enough for the company to regain its mojo, remains to be seen. It seems the newest recruit, Scroll CEO Tony Haile, does see the bigger picture.

“When you see Spaces, Revue or Scroll, you see Twitter focused on expanding, not encroaching on the value it helps others to create,” he writes on the Scroll blog. “Twitter is marching to the beat of a different drum and knows success will come from a bigger pie not a larger slice.”

In his post announcing the deal, he points out what makes Twitter unique compared to every other big platform — read Facebook. 

“For every other platform, journalism is dispensable. If journalism were to disappear tomorrow their business would carry on much as before,” Haile writes. “Twitter is the only large platform whose success is deeply intertwined with a sustainable journalism ecosystem.” 

And he is right — it is not just journalism in the classic sense. Journalism, as we have known, is changing. Twitter can’t fall into the trap of the media’s past and almost always lean into the future. Whether it is live conversations, podcasts, video streams, photos, newsletters, everything that is media can benefit from Twitter’s taking a cue from that other content company, Spotify. 

PS: Being very self-referential today, I dug up this little piece from 2012: 

Over the past few years we have started to see the transformation of media by new technologies, new methods of distribution and newer ways to consume information I have always believed that we’ve got to stop thinking of media as what it was and focus on more of what it could be. In the world of plenty, the only currency is attention and attention is what defines “media.” Zynga is fighting Hollywood for attention (and winning). Instagram is taking moments away from other media. They have attention. There are old companies that are dying and new ones that are being invented.