As part of his bid to reshape Twitter, ostensibly in his own image, Elon Musk, the South African-American billionaire who bought the company last week, announced that the micro-blogging platform will have a paid monetisation system for creators. He tweeted last weekend that the social media platform will soon add “creator monetization for all forms of content” on the app. Followed by creator monetization for all forms of content Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 5, 2022 Why is monetisation for creators important? YouTube has dominated the content market because it pays creators to produce high-quality creative content. A portion of the advertising revenue from each content is paid as a reward to the creator. This caused influencers from other social media platforms to encourage followers to subscribe to their YouTube accounts as they sought to tap into that monetisation system. Creators bringing subscribers to YouTube means more people will spend longer on the app, making more money for YouTube. Twitter currently has an average of 450 million monthly active users, a low figure compared to YouTube, which has about 2.1 billion monthly active users worldwide. Elon Musk’s goal is to increase the number of active users on the app and make money for the company. To beat YouTube, it must incentivise its creators to make the app a go-to content hub. However, Musk is not the only one who has set his eyes on YouTube’s type of creator incentivisation. The fast-growing app TikTok has rolled out a profit-sharing model similar to YouTube for its top-performing creators. Snapchat, which recorded massive losses this year, has also explored this payment model for creators. What do other social media companies offer creators? On Instagram, users can subscribe to an influencer they like and get access to their special Stories and exclusive Reels that other regular users don’t get to view or at least not immediately. While it’s too early to predict how it will perform with Instagram, the Meta-owned platform can afford to take its time because it is not as pressured as Twitter to create that monetisation system. This is partly because Instagram influencers are paid relatively high fees for sponsored content by brands. They also get gift items, shopping vouchers and all-expense-paid trips from these brands compared to influencers on some other apps. Twitter currently has some monetisation options itself with more creator-centric profit-sharing models. For instance, it gives 97 per cent of the revenue it gets from its Super Follow feature to the creator. The Super Follow feature is a product that users can pay for to give them extra access to someone they already follow. This doesn’t compare to YouTube’s multiple monetisation options for creators. Several YouTube products give creators some opportunity for monetisation. YouTube has Advertising Revenue, which gives creators a cut from the advertising money their video generates. Influencers like Eric Okafor, who does phone and other gadget reviews, have pivoted to this content format. Read also: How Eric Okafor became the king of short-form tech reviews on YouTube. Then it has Channel Memberships, making subscribers make recurring monthly payments in exchange for special perks from creators; Shopping, making merchandise sales easier for creators; Super Chat and Super Stickers, where fans pay to get their messages or animated images highlighted in chat streams; Super Thanks, where fans pay to get their message highlighted in the comments section; and YouTube Premium Revenue, where creators get a cut when Premium subscribers watch their content. Also, there are other initiatives, such as YouTube Next Up, which involves all-expense paid trips, and the plaques of recognition presented to creators when they hit a milestone in their subscriber journey. Other social media platforms have been trailing Facebook and YouTube in terms of active users for years. For Twitter to compete, it must consider creating r...