Our tweets may be limited to 280 characters, but Twitter has revealed its desire to provide long-form content today by announcing its acquisition of a newsletter platform.
Kavyon Beykpour, Twitter product lead, and Mike Park, VP of Publisher Products, announced via the Twitter blog that the company has acquired Revue, which is described as "a service that makes it free and easy for anyone to start and publish editorial newsletters."
The Twitter blog goes on to explain that, "Twitter is uniquely positioned to help organizations and writers grow their readership faster and at a much larger scale than anywhere else. Many established writers and publishers have built their brand on Twitter, amassing an audience that’s hungry for the next article or perspective they Tweet. Our goal is to make it easy for them to connect with their subscribers, while also helping readers better discover writers and their content."
Before the Twitter acquisition, Revue offered both free and Pro tiers, which writers paid a fee to use. However, the fee is now gone and Pro features are available for all accounts. The paid newsletter fee is also being lowered to five percent, making it 50 percent cheaper than main rival platform Substack.
Existing users will be happy to hear Twitter is keeping Revue as a standalone service while at the same time expanding the team running it. The goal is for this larger team to, "build more discovery, reading, and conversational experiences centered around long-form content on Twitter."