The anarchic behavior of YouTubers attracts huge online audiences and has turned stars like MrBeast and Logan Paul into the highest-paid entertainers of the Internet age. Now Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, wants a piece of that lucrative action and will try to lure video creators to the social media platform.
In a series of messages, Musk engaged with video producers, saying he was planning to “monetize creators across all forms of content” and that his company could “beat” the 55% cut in ad revenue that YouTube gives its top entertainers.
Asked when he would give more details, he replied: “Two weeks.”
Although rival sites like TikTok are rising in the rankings, YouTube generates more money for its creators than any other platform thanks to the scale of ad sales, audience size and the structure of its revenue-sharing model.
The highest-paid YouTubers earned a collective $300m (£264m) in 2021, according to Forbes, with advertising revenue supplemented by merchandise and back catalog sales.
At the top of the league is MrBeast, AKA 24-year-old Jimmy Donaldson from North Carolina, who started posting videos when he was 13 years old. He took home an estimated $54 million last year, beating out actress Angelina Jolie and media personality Kim Kardashian. and making him the highest paid YouTuber ever.
An internet stunt master, MrBeast is best known for spending 50 hours buried alive in a coffin and hosting his own version of the Squid Game. Brothers Logan and Jake Paul are among the top 10 winners, having gone from filming themselves playing video games and joking around to learning how to box and taking on big names – or rival internet stars – in well-publicized fights.
This weekend Twitter began offering a paid service, Twitter Blue, which will cost $7.99 per month. The platform currently does not allow long-form videos, limiting users to two minutes and 20 seconds. But Musk tweeted on Saturday that Twitter Blue subscribers would be able to post video “snippets” of up to 42 minutes.
Those willing to pay to post will also receive the blue tick indicating that Twitter has verified their identity, a feature usually reserved for public figures such as government officials, journalists and celebrities.
Amidst the chaos and anxiety caused by the wholesale layoff of half of Twitter’s 7,500-person workforce, engineering teams rolled out the new feature at breakneck speed.
Musk bought Twitter late last month for $44 billion, in a deal backed by billions of his own money. The entrepreneur has now set up a war room at the company’s San Francisco headquarters, where he and a small team of advisers are trying to cut costs and launch new products.
The first of these was Twitter Blue, rolled out in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Everyday Astronaut, a YouTube creator with 1.3 million subscribers, responded to Musk’s “monetization” tweets with a post stating that he would consider uploading his videos to the site if it could handle full-length videos and pay creators with a YouTube-style system.
If twitter can handle the full-featured videos I produce and can offer a similar monetization system as YouTube does, I’d consider uploading my full-featured videos here too for sure. https://t.co/JsYw9DI9oO
— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) November 5, 2022
In messages with other Twitter users, Musk asked how YouTube’s monetization works — paying popular creators. When informed that YouTube gives creators 55% of ad revenue, he replied: “We can beat that.”
Musk’s comments follow reports that Twitter is considering allowing users to pay for video content, with the platform taking a hiatus, though the project has been branded high-risk internally.
Twitter reportedly considered a Fans-style subscription under its previous leadership, but abandoned the plan due to concerns about being able to police such a service for child sexual abuse material.
Twitter’s current setup for paying creators consists of a “tips” service, where users can tip creators money, and a “super follow” feature, which allows people to pay users up to $9.99 a month for exclusive tweets.
TikTok makes undisclosed funding available to some creators in the UK, while porn-dominated user-generated site OnlyFans gives creators 80% of their subscription fees.
Twitter makes about 90% of its $5 billion in annual revenue from advertising. However, that revenue stream has been damaged by furor over Musk’s takeover, as big-name advertisers such as Audi, Carlsberg and United Airlines halted spending amid fears that content moderation standards will slip. Musk tweeted on Friday that there had been a “massive drop” in ad revenue on the platform.
