My toxic, symbiotic relationship with Twitter goes back to 2007, when I first set up a profile, or at least to 2013, when I blacked out and erased my account, along with the contents of my stomach. But I’m still down bad, and like any good good, I can’t quit. I’m biased toward any moves the company makes, and this one is no different.
This week, Twitter announced a newer feature to their newest feature, the Tip Jar, enabling creators to solicit Bitcoin from their supporters and, far more importantly, authenticate their NFTs, so your digital recreation of a holofoil Charizard can get a little blue checkmark next to it now. Talk about innovation.
In the years since I unceremoniously offed my original account, I’ve curated an epic feed for myself of early stage entrepreneurs, clout lords, and non-partisan political correspondents, and I’ve made more connections on Twitter than on LinkedIn or Facebook combined. So I’m thrilled by the prospect of using crypto tools to cut out the middleman in various payment processing schemes. Deciding to go full TikTok to help creators on their platform build sustainable monetization models around their content is a great ploy to bring better creators and new users to the platform.
What I don’t understand is how the company intends to make money on features like this. They aren’t taking a percentage of the transaction fee, an accomplishment in and of itself for a profit-driven company. I can only hope Jack has larger plans for integrating the company with a decentralized social network. But might just be me.
