Twitter acquires newsletter platform Revue

The move is seen as Twitter’s first efforts to bring long-form content and subscription-based model on its platform.

Twitter aims to woo writers and publishers  (Pixabay)

Twitter on Tuesday announced the acquisition of Revue, a newsletter platform aimed at writers and content publishers. The company did not disclose financial details of the deal.

Following the acquisition, Twitter will acquire the Revue team, though the brand will stay independent. The company said the deal would help accelerate its work to help users stay updated with their interests and giving writers another way to monetise their audience.

Twitter in a blog post pointed out that its platform is leveraged by several established writers and publishers.

Snapshot of Revue  (Twitter)

Snapshot of Revue  (Twitter)

“Our goal is to make it easy for them to connect with their subscribers, while also helping readers better discover writers and their content. We're imagining a lot of ways to do this, from allowing people to sign up for newsletters from their favourite follows on Twitter, to new settings for writers to host conversations with their subscribers. It will all work seamlessly within Twitter,” the company added.

Twitter also plans to introduce an incentive model through the paid newsletters.

According to an Axios report, Revue has a small 6-member team and raised just $318,000 so far. The report points out that the acquisition also marks Twitter's first set of steps to build long-form content through its platform. It is also an effort to build a subscription-based revenue model.

As far as Revue's business model goes, the platform allows writers and publishers to send newsletters to 50 people for free. The paid version allowed publishers to send up to 40,000 people. The platform took 6% cut from the paid newsletters. Twitter, however, will reduce the fee to 5%.