Paying for someone else isn't something new. It's just one of the many ways people show affection, support, respect, and also love.
And here, Twitter is becoming a place for that, by introducing what it calls the 'Tip Jar'. Initially made available to Twitter in English users on both iOS and Twitter, the particular feature allows users to send money to their favorite accounts.
At this time, the feature is only a limited group of creators, journalists, experts, and some nonprofits.
Twitter said that it plans to soon allow more people to add this Tip Jar feature to their profile.
The microblogging platform also said that it plans to expand the feature to more languages.
“This is a first step in our work to create new ways for people to receive and show support on Twitter — with money,” said Esther Crawford, senior product manager at Twitter, in a blog post.
People on Twitter are already doing this—adding their PayPal and $Cashtag to their bio or as a reply to a Tweet that takes off. We want to make it easier to show support beyond Retweets, Likes, or Follows.
— Esther Crawford (@esthercrawford) May 6, 2021
In a blog post, Twitter said that:
Users can know when someone has activated the Tip Jar feature on their profile when they see the Tip Jar icon next to the follow button on the person's profile page.
To send money, all they need to do, is tap on the icon to see a list of payment services or platforms that the account has enabled.
Users can then select whichever payment service or platform they prefer, and Twitter will redirect the users to the selected app.
And for those users who want to receive money using Tip Jar, they need to enable the feature by going to the 'Edit profile' to toggle the feature on. After that, they can then start adding the payment details.
"The services* you can add today include Bandcamp, Cash App, Patreon, PayPal and Venmo. Twitter takes no cut. On Android, tips can also be sent within Spaces," Twitter said.
"Tip Jar is an easy way to support the incredible voices that make up the conversation on Twitter. This is a first step in our work to create new ways for people to receive and show support on Twitter – with money."
While sending and receiving money through the web is nothing new, the Tip Jar is Twitter's debut.
As a place where people can hope to get their voices, opinions and thoughts listened by Twitter's many users, this Tip Jar allows those people to also make some money in the process.
It should be noted that at this time, or at least during the initial introduction, reports said that Tip Jar has some major security issue.
For example, user sending money through PayPal can have their address seen when the recipient opened the receipt.
After numerous people reported the issue, Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour said that Twitter could not control how PayPal handled that information, but added that Twitter would update its tipping prompt and Help Center to warn users about the issue.
Security risks aside, Tip Jar should be a welcome feature.
As a feature that is very easy to use, it should be a convenient way for users to monetize their Twitter accounts, which could also help the company grow its user base.