People will be able to tip their favorite content creators in Bitcoin, and a fund will be established to compensate those users who host audio chat rooms on Twitter’s Spaces function. It is the first big social media platform to promote cryptocurrency as a payment option.
The San Francisco-based firm announced on Thursday that it will test new ways to make Twitter safer for users, such as alerting users when they are entering a “hot” chat or allowing them to abandon tweet threads.
The product launches are part of Twitter’s drive to compete for prominent content creators with enormous followings with competitor platforms like Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube, as well as to change its reputation as a site where polarized debates can fester.
Twitter users on iOS devices around the world may now make and receive digital payments, which was previously only available to a select set of beta testers. In a press briefing, Twitter’s product director for creator monetization, Esther Crawford, said, “We believe we can continue to incentivize the types of interactions that people want to see.”
Twitter has announced that it will support authentication for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are digital assets like photographs or movies stored on a blockchain. The function will allow users to track and display their NFT ownership on Twitter, according to the business.
Twitter will introduce a creator fund to support users who offer regular audio programs on Spaces with financial, technical, and marketing support. According to Andre Jean-Pierre, a Spaces early beta tester, such support will allow more Spaces hosts to organize better dialogues and potentially earn brand sponsorship deals.
Twitter also stated that it is looking into allowing users to filter out certain terms from replies to their tweets that they do not want to read, which may be used to prevent name-calling or abusive conduct.