X is giving content creators a new way to tempt their followers into paying for subscriptions. The social media platform announced a new feature called “Exclusive Threads,” which allows accounts to hide specific parts of a multi-post conversation behind a paywall.
The name choice is a bit ironic, considering that X’s biggest rival in the text-based social media space is Meta’s own app, also called Threads. But the goal here is purely financial: helping creators turn their casual readers into paying customers.
Before this update, creators who used X’s subscription tools had to lock their entire post behind a subscriber-only gate. Now, they can use a different tactic. They can post the first few messages of a thread publicly for everyone to see. Then, they can block the rest of the conversation so that only paying subscribers can read it.
The idea is simple marketing. A creator can use the public posts to hook the reader with an interesting story or a useful tip. Just as the story gets good, the text stops. X will insert a button directly into the post chain prompting the user to sign up and pay to see the rest. The company hopes that curiosity will drive people to hit that subscribe button.
The company’s head of product, Nikita Bier, shared a preview of how the new tool works, showing how the subscription prompt blends smoothly into the reading experience.
This update is part of a much larger push by X to attract and keep top talent on its platform. Over the past year, the company has rolled out several features to help influencers make money, including revenue sharing and a new “paid partnership” label for sponsored posts. By giving creators more ways to cash in on their content, X hopes to prove that it is still the best place to build a profitable audience online.
