For all of you who have ever said, “I can’t believe this app is free,” you may soon have your chance to pay for the app. Twitter has revealed that it is upgrading its free platform with a few new paid features users can subscribe to. This week, the social network announced the launch of its first-ever paid subscription service, Twitter Blue, designed to empower users with exclusive new tools to enhance their social media experience for a small monthly fee. Twitter Blue marks the company’s first attempt at creating a subscription business model that also has the potential to diversify Twitter’s revenue streams — much of which comes from advertising, according to its first-quarter earnings report. The new service is being introduced as a response to the consistent feedback it’s gotten from users asking for perks to help elevate their profiles and tweets. “We’ve heard from the people that use Twitter a lot, and we mean a lot, that we don’t always build power features that meet their...

Patreon helps content creators sell monthly content subscriptions to its fans. Currently, 2 million patrons are backing more than 100,000 of their favorite creators on the platform. Kit is a startup that launched with the idea to help people discover products worth getting while influencers are able to share their favorite products and earn revenue from the sales. With Patreon’s recent acquisition of Kit , monthly subscription packages will now be able to offer so much more in the way of merchandise, which will further encourage subscriptions at higher monthly tiers than before. With the acquisition, Kit, which has raised $2.5 million since it was founded, is able to continue its commitment to “connecting creators and fans and followers and to making it easier to reward creativity and expertise.” Patreon, which has a valuation of nearly $450 million, plans to build an open merchandise provider platform. Creators who are already using Kit will not lose their revenue streams during...