Twitter happens to be the new owners of Scroll, the company that offers an add-free news reading experience. Twitter though isn’t revealing how much it is spending to buy Scroll, or how it plans to use the Scroll platform in the future.
Scroll shot to limelight with its ingenious method that allowed users access to premium news articles with no annoying ads popping up to mar the experience. In return, Scroll would charge a monthly $5 subscription, which the company shared with the participating sites in return for them agreeing to blank out the ads.
However, post its acquisition by Twitter, Scroll has stopped accepting new registrations. The company also isn’t saying what plans they have with the Scroll acquisition, only revealing that it will form part of a new subscription service that is being readied. No other details such as what the company will be offering as part of the subscription plan or what the service will cost and so on are being revealed at the moment.
That said, what is almost a certainty is that one of Twitter’s earlier acquisitions, Revue too is going to feature prominently in the new scheme of things. In fact, all of this seems to be part of a well-thought-out plan given that Revue happens to be an online publishing platform that can be used to create and publish newsletters.
As VP of Product, Mike Park stated, the immediate plan is to offer paid subscribers premium services such as access to news articles from top news sites. Plus, such users will also be getting newsletters via Revue. The revenue-sharing plan is going to be the same as it was with Scroll, with a portion of what the subscribers pay eventually making it to the writers and publishers of the content.
However, as already stated, it still is a mystery how Twitter plans to integrate Revue and Scroll within its platform. Right now, Twitter serves as nothing more than just a platform to shoot out a couple of tweets at the most, which keeps user engagements to just the bare minimum. Somehow, it will like users to remain on the site a bit longer, and both Revue and Scroll are going to be part of how that is achieved.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
