Twitter is acquiring Revue, an email service that allows authors to publish newsletters. This move allows Twitter to leverage its user base of writers, journalists, and publications, who regularly use the service to attract readers and expand its audience.
Kayvon Beykpour, Head of Product at Twitter, explained: “With a strong community of writers and readers, Twitter is in a unique position to help organizations and writers expand their readership faster and more widely.” “Our goal is to make it easy for them to interact with Subscribers contact, while also helping readers better discover the author and its content.”
Twitter’s acquisition of Revue also puts it in direct competition with Substack, a competitor’s email newsletter service that has become more and more popular recently.
Many well-known journalists have left traditional media companies to start paid newsletters on Substack.
Substack launched a newsletter reader function in December and promised to take a fairly loose approach to a content review of its services. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel interviewed Chris Best, co-founder, and CEO of Substack last month if you are interested in learning more about the new model of journalism.
The New York Times reported that Twitter even started discussing the acquisition of Substack in November, but co-founder Hamish McKenzie made it clear that the deal would not happen.
Twitter is now providing Revue Pro features for free for all accounts and reducing the cost of paid press releases to 5%. Obviously, this is to attract more writers to Revue and to reduce Substack’s fees by 10%.
Revue was originally established in the Netherlands in 2015. According to the New York Times, it has 6 employees. This is a small-scale business that regards the Chicago Sun-Times and Verge publisher Vox Media as users of the service.
Twitter said it plans to continue to run Revue as a standalone service. “We will continue to invest in Revue as an independent service, and its team will continue to focus on improving the way writers create newsletters, build audiences and pay for their work,” Beykpour said. “Over time, the team will build more discovery, reading, and conversation experiences around long-form content on Twitter.”