Twitter wants in on the creator economy, but it still needs a plan

Twitter wants to crack into the creator economy. Its plan? It doesn't really have one yet.

Twitter CFO Ned Segal said during a conversation on Spaces Thursday that "a lot" of creators are on Twitter and use the platform to build their audience, but they go elsewhere to make money. "We need to do a better job at helping them stay on Twitter for their customers' benefit, for their own benefit, for our benefit," Segal said.

The platform does have avenues for people to make money through features like Super Follows, tip jars and ticketed spaces. But the issue isn't that creators don't think they can get paid on Twitter — in fact, Segal said he'd rather give "as much money as we can" to creators instead of Twitter. The problem, Segal said, is that Twitter hasn't done a good enough job of saying there's a place for creators on the platform. "We need to reduce friction to get people paid, come up with more ways to do it."

Virtually every social media platform is trying to figure out how to appease creators. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and even Pinterest are fighting for creators to use their short-form video tools, while Spotify wants all the audio creators.

But influencers clearly have not embraced Twitter's audio tools, based on Segal's remarks, and the company has only just started to play around with more video features. Twitter has made it clear that it's willing to pay creators, which is half the battle. Now it needs to figure out how.