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Twitter might build a paid subscription service for power users

Twitter might build a paid subscription service for power users

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New analytics inside TweetDeck

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Twitter is considering offering a paid subscription to power users, including brands and news organizations, The Verge has confirmed. Twitter users today began tweeting screenshots of the survey and a mock-up of what the premium version of Twitter could look like, with new analytics, alerts about breaking news, and information about what an account’s followers are tweeting about. The advanced features would be contained within Tweetdeck, the company’s app for professionals. The core service would remain free.

“We’re conducting this survey to assess the interest in a new, more enhanced version of Tweetdeck,” a spokeswoman told The Verge. “We regularly conduct user research to gather feedback about people’s Twitter experience and to better inform our product investment decisions, and we're exploring several ways to make Tweetdeck even more valuable for professionals.”

The company has not yet begun to build the service, a source familiar with the matter told The Verge. The survey is designed to help the team prioritize the product roadmap for the service.

Here’s the language in the survey that Twitter is distributing:

Twitter is considering offering an advanced TweetDeck experience, with more powerful tools to help marketers, journalists, professionals, and others in our community find out what is happening in the world quicker, to gain more insights, and see the broadest range of what people are saying on Twitter. Whether you use Twitter for work or just want to be more informed on the latest news, sports, entertainment, political viewpoints, and information in today’s world, this advanced TweetDeck experience will be designed to help you get even more out of Twitter.

This premium tool set will provide valuable viewing, posting, and signaling tools like alerts, trends and activity analysis, advanced analytics, and composing and posting tools all in one customizable dashboard. It will be designed to make it easier than ever to keep up with multiple interests, grow your audience, and see even more great content and information in real-time.

It would also offer extra features such as advanced audience insights & analytics, tools to monitor multiple timelines from multiple accounts and from multiple devices, including mobile, all in an ad-free experience."

A subscription business could offer Twitter a vital new revenue stream at a time when its advertising revenue has been in decline. As other companies work to peel off the remaining parts of the company’s business, Twitter needs to give its core user base reasons to stick around. It’s unclear that advanced analytics would be a major business for the company. But given the attacks that Twitter is facing from all sides, any investment in the core product is good news for users.