Twitter will be acquiring the subscription service Scroll – which helps writers and publishers optimize their content: Scroll provides a $5-per-month subscription plan that allows users to read online news articles without ads, pop-ups and or any other feature disrupting their reading experience.
Twitter has revealed its plan to incorporate the subscription service on their website and to build Scroll’s publisher network. Users who pay for subscription plans will gain exclusive access to ad-free, premium news on Twitter or on Twitter’s recently acquired newsletter platform Revue. The subscription revenue will be divided between Twitter and the writers or publishers of the news articles.
Mike Park – the VP of Product at Twitter – shared the importance of subscription services like Scroll:
“Looking ahead, Scroll will become a meaningful addition to our subscriptions work as we build and shape a future subscription service on Twitter. As a Twitter subscriber, picture getting access to premium features where you can easily read articles from your favorite news outlet or a writer’s newsletter from Revue, with a portion of your subscription going to the publishers and writers creating the content”.
… NEWS! Twitter is acquiring @tryscroll.
Scroll gives readers what they want: clutter-free reading across the web, and publishers what they need: a way to make more money than they would through ads on their site. A short …https://t.co/3NCfsEwNTv
— Mike Park (@mep) May 4, 2021
Twitter’s latest acquisition will eliminate Nuzzel – a Scroll service that displays the latest news articles on a Twitter users’ feed – from May 6. Nuzzel revealed that Twitter will be developing a similar Nuzzel feature from scratch to integrate onto Twitter:
“When Twitter approached us about bringing Scroll into their broader subscription plans, all sides were excited about what we could do with Nuzzel and spent weeks trying to find a way to bring it with us. In the end, we found that the only way for Nuzzel to meet the scalability requirements necessary for a company like Twitter was to rebuild the service from scratch”.
Current Scroll subscribers will still be able to access the ad-block service. However, Twitter has temporarily suspended any future sign-ups. Aspiring publishers that wish to join Scroll can sign up here for the upcoming updates.