What happened
Shares of Twitter (TWTR) jumped as much as 9.7% on Wednesday. As of about 11:30 a.m. EDT, however, shares were up 6.5%.
The tech stock's gain follows speculation that the social network could be launching a subscription-based service.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Following news of a new job posting on Twitter's website that said the company was building a subscription platform code-named "Gryphon," investors speculated on Wednesday about a potential new revenue opportunity for the company.
"This is a first for Twitter!" the job post said about the subscription platform it was building. The company doesn't say much about this secretive project other than that the Gryphon team will be made up web engineers "closely collaborating with the Payments team and the Twitter.com team."
Now what
While it's impossible to know from this information just how ambitious Twitter's potential subscription plans are, it is definitely notable to see the company hiring for a new subscription platform. After all, Twitter currently makes most of its money from advertising. Launching a subscription offering could open up incremental revenue opportunities while also diversifying its business away from advertising.
