By AJ Fabino
Elon Musk’s move at Twitter to share ad revenue with creators and content producers signals a new paradigm in the growing creator economy.
Now as a private entity under Musk, the social media company apparently has some users who want more than the financial benefit from their content: they want to invest directly into the platform, according to a poll from Zenger News.
For the uninitiated, Twitter launched its Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program earlier in the year, and issued the first batch of payouts on Thursday — some earners made as much as $37,050.
Under the program, Twitter started rewarding heavy tweeters for their engagement on the platform, which serves to incentivize quality content production and increase creator retention.
Investing In Twitter, The Private Company: Zenger News’s poll brought to light an intriguing possibility for Twitter, Musk and its users — the chance for content creators to reinvest their ad-revenue share into Twitter for shares of the private company.
Of the more than 200 respondents, 56.7% expressed a desire for Musk to allow the reinvestment option.
With Twitter operating as a private entity, a private share sale could potentially open new avenues for user engagement and investment. Purchasing shares in a private company is a complex process, typically involving venture capital, private equity, or private investing, and often requires substantial capital upfront.
Twitter could innovate the process, similar to how it is aiming to disrupt the creator economy. For instance, a direct reinvestment plan could allow users to convert their ad revenue into equity stakes in Twitter, effectively becoming sharehZenger News.
It would be beneficial to the retention of Twitter’s heaviest users, and act as a money-raising tool for Twitter in the face of declining advertiser participation and revenues.
Another way it could work is with an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) model, where users-turned-creators are treated similarly to employees, enabling them to purchase shares at a discount.
A New Era Of Creator Engagement? Twitter would bring a new kind of engagement if it allowed creators to reinvest their ad revenue into shares of the company. It would fit the ethos of Musk’s “town square” vision for Twitter, as it would effectively place the company’s ownership into the hands of its closest users.
While the above model comes with risks and challenges, it would undoubtedly dawn a new era of user engagement and investment in the social media world.
Produced in association with Benzinga