The new year is about to start with a big change for Twitter, which since January 12, 2023 will terminate Revue, its newsletter service integrated on the platform. From that date, it will no longer be possible to access Revue accounts and – as a post on the official website explains – all data will be deleted.
Before January 12, users of the feature, especially authors and publishers, will be able to supload subscriber lists to their newsletters. They will also have access to an archive that collects metrics and insights. Revue is currently notifying its subscribers via email of the closure. All payments to the service will be suspended starting December 20th.
After 8 years, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Revue on January 18, 2023. It’s been an amazing ride and we’re super grateful to all who have used our service. Thanks for everything! https://t.co/8CffHYrWcT
— Martijn – mdk.eth (@mdekuijper) December 14, 2022
Why is Twitter suspending the newsletter service?
Twitter, heavily populated by writers and journalists, acquired Revue in 2021, with the intention of helping authors by providing a newsletter service at competitive prices. The big plus was above all the integration of the service with Twitter profiles of newspapers and authors. In this way, with a simple click, readers could easily subscribe to the newsletter. At the same time, Facebook also launched a similar service: Bulletinwhich however also closed its doors a few months ago.
At the moment it is not clear why Twitter has decided to suspend a proprietary service which, after all, brings a discreet economic contribution to the company’s coffers. A contribution that, at least potentially, would make Twitter less dependent on third-party investors (such as advertising).
An interesting hypothesis comes from The Verge. The portal reports that Elon Musk would be about to buy Substack, which is also a newsletter service, and therefore it would be useless to keep two similar functions active. That of The Verge, we reiterate, is for now only an unverified hypothesis.
What is certain, however, is that Elon Musk has promised new changes for the benefit of authors and journalists. The owner of the azure platform confirmed that the character limit for tweets will be increased, from the current 280 to 4,000. This entire article you are reading could potentially become a tweet.