Twitter eyes up paid power-user membership option to reverse fortunes

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It's no secret that Twitter has been struggling recently and it seems that one of the options it’s considering to turn things around is adding a paid membership option to its service.

So, what would you get for your paid membership? Access to a more enhanced version of Tweetdeck, apparently – Twitter’s external Twitter interface which already offers more features than the standard website and app. 

The tool would give users “valuable viewing, posting, and signaling tools like alerts, trends and activity analysis, advanced analytics, and composing and posting tools all in one customizable dashboard.”

High value users

While other social media services have been growing steadily over the past year, with Snapchat pulling in huge numbers and Instagram becoming the platform of choice for advertisers and influencers Twitter has fallen by the wayside.

Adding a premium membership scheme with audience growing features that are relevant to businesses and social media influencers could give Twitter a way to hold on to a good chunk of its users and add a new stream of income outside of advertising revenue.

Nothing has been confirmed just yet but Twitter is apparently surveying a small number of its users to gauge their interest in the move, stating: “We regularly conduct user research to gather feedback about people’s Twitter experience and to better inform our product investment decisions, and we're exploring several ways to make Tweetdeck even more valuable for professionals.”

If Twitter does decide to go ahead with its plan it’ll be going up against third party services like HootSuite which have been doing similar things for years already.

It’s surprising that Twitter didn’t decide to do this when these third party services started to crop up, though it does perhaps go some way towards explaining why the service’s user base has stagnated in recent months. 

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