Twitter has said it’s exploring features like tipping to give people a way to pay other Twitter users, and now we have further evidence that a tip feature may be on the way. App researcher Jane Manchun Wong shared images on Thursday and Friday showing that Twitter could offer a tipping button right on user profiles.
Here’s one iteration of what it could look like — check out the little blue cash button under the “@wongmjane” watermark in the left image. Clicking or tapping that button apparently shows options to let you tip via Bandcamp, Cash App (made by Square, which counts Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as its CEO, too), Patreon, PayPal, and Venmo.
As you can see in this tweet, Wong also found evidence in March that Twitter is working on a “Tip Jar” feature for Twitter Spaces, the company’s Clubhouse-like social audio rooms (Clubhouse just introduced its own direct payments feature on April 5th).
Here’s another look at the tipping button on profiles, from Wong. These screenshots show a black tipping button instead of a blue one. They also show designs Twitter is apparently testing for its forthcoming Super Follows, which will let you charge followers so they can access extra content. (Think Patreon, but for tweets.)
Twitter has not formally announced a tipping feature, so there’s no guarantee the company actually releases it publicly. Even if it does, it’s unclear if there would be any restrictions on who could put a tipping button on their profile. It seems possible that the feature will be gated in some way, perhaps requiring you to have a certain number of followers or be verified.
Twitter declined to comment.
