For its next act, Twitter is getting into the business of forecasting the weather. And that makes sense—people are often tweeting about the weather.
On Tuesday, Twitter launched a weather news service for a mostly paid audience, which it is calling Tomorrow. The company hired meteorologist Eric Holthaus—formerly of Quartz and other publications—to helm the initiative, which will serve 16 US cities, Axios first reported.
Holthaus is building a team of 20-30 climate writers, who will predominantly engage with subscribers paying $10 a month via Revue newsletters, which Twitter acquired in January, and Spaces, the platform’s live audio feature akin to Clubhouse. There will be some Q&As and other features for non-paying Twitter users.
Tomorrow is a bold play for subscription revenue to complement Twitter’s ad-based business. Twitter makes most of its money from advertising, though it does a sizable business licensing user data to other companies as well. Even though the advertising business has been good to Twitter—it made a $68 million profit in the first quarter and its stock price has nearly doubled since the start of the pandemic—the company is looking to diversify its revenue.
The social media platform has been tinkering with a subscription service for a while now, but its plans are finally coming to fruition. In the coming months, the company is expected to announce Twitter Blue, a $2.99 per month subscription version of Twitter, joining Microsoft’s LinkedIn and indie darling Discord as major platforms with premium plans. But Twitter also knows that more people are paying for news in the US and enjoying creator-led subscription services like Substack, Patreon, and OnlyFans.
If it can accustom a significant portion of its 199 million daily users to pay for tweets, newsletters, and live experiences on the platform, Twitter could become a hub not only for real-time news but a place where people pay for it.