Twitter wants to make it easier to read journalistic articles. To this end, the short message service has taken over the adblocking and subscription service Scroll, which will soon be integrated into Twitter. Here’s what the concrete plans look like.
No annoying pop-ups or ads to interrupt reading – for many, this is a dream of the Internet, for which they are also prepared to shell out a euro or two. For some time now, major media companies such as Die Zeit and Spiegel have been offering so-called “pure subscriptions. Here, readers consciously decide against advertising.
Spiegel’s Pur subscription, for example, costs 4.99 euros a month and frees the site from annoying ads. The publisher hopes to earn around half a million euros a year in this way, according to a statement from the end of 2020.
Twitter buys adblocking service Scroll
Now short messaging service Twitter has also gotten into the pur-subscription business, acquiring subscription service Scroll to do so, writes head of product Mike Park in a blog post.
Scroll has developed a way to read articles without ads, pop-ups and other clutter, cleaning up the reading experience and giving people what they want: just the content.
More revenue and higher dwell time for publishers
With Scroll, user:ins can read articles without the annoying pop-ups or ads. In return, they also have to pay a monthly fee, which Scroll then shares with the participating media companies.
According to the publishers, they earn up to 40 percent more than they would from blocked advertising. The model also has a positive impact on dwell time: readers spend an average of 28 percent more time on the respective page.
The Twitter subscription with scroll
Twitter now wants to integrate such a subscription into its short message service. Users will be able to access selected articles from participating media free of charge – the media, on the other hand, will then receive a portion of the subscription fee.
Twitter plans to integrate the scroll technology into its own platform in the coming months. The short message service has not yet announced further details. The pricing model is also still unknown.
