Twitter Stock Soars On News Of Possible Subscription Service

Shares of Twitter surged Wednesday (July 8) after an apparent job listing spilled the beans on the social media giant’s budding efforts to build a subscription service.

The company’s stock price jumped 7.3 percent to $35.41 a share on the heels of a flurry of media reports about the Twitter job listing, which seeks a software engineer for a team codenamed Gryphon.

The team, in turn, is building a “subscription platform, one that can be reused by other teams in the future. This is a first for Twitter!” reads the ad posted under the Careers section of the company’s website.

The team, in turn, is working out of offices in San Francisco, New York, Boston and London, the ad states, noting that “we collaborate across these time zones in an efficient way.”

“Gryphon is a team of web engineers who are closely collaborating with the Payments team and the Twitter.com team,” the ad states. “We are looking for a full-stack engineer to lead the Payment and Subscription client work, someone who values collaboration as much as we do and can act as a bridge for the engineering team.”

Given the jump in Twitter’s stock price, investors seem to have already taken a shine to the idea.

A subscription service could arm Twitter with a new revenue stream at a time when the social media giant could use a boost to its bottom line.

While Twitter has been posting steady user growth, revenue from ads has come under pressure amid the coronavirus-triggered economic downturn.

Twitter has previously shot down speculation on other possible, revenue-generating additions to its lineup, including the idea that it might enable users to tip people on the social media platform, possibly using bitcoin.

As far as the posting for the engineering job, applicants don’t need a computer science degree to apply. Members of the Gryphon team have degrees in anthropology, design and economics, the ad notes.