TWITTER ACQUIRES EMAIL NEWSLETTER STARTUP REVUE

Wed 27 January 2021:

Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it had acquired email newsletter startup, Revue, as the microblogging platform seeks to attract users who want to make money from their followers.

Twitter, which did not disclose the deal value, said it would make Revue’s premium features free for all users starting on Tuesday and lower the paid newsletter fee to help writers retain more of the revenue generated from subscriptions.

Newsletters aren’t the most obvious fit for Twitter’s platform, but in a blog post, Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour and VP of Publisher Products Mike Park suggested that that this is a new way for Twitter to serve writers and publishers who have built a following with their tweets.

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

They also suggested that this will give writers additional ways to make money. Revue already supports paid subscriptions, and Beykpour and Park said that the company will continue developing new monetization features, “whether it’s helping broaden revenue streams or serving as a cornerstone of someone’s business.”

Founded about six years ago in Utrecht, Netherlands, Revue has customers including Vox Media, Chicago Sun-Times, the Markup and competes with services like Substack.

Following the takeover, Revue will operate as a standalone service and expand its team by hiring for key roles across engineering, design, research and data science.

San Francisco, California-based Twitter said the acquisition would provide writers and long-form content curators a new way to connect with their audience.