Former Twitter/X employee bags $700 from creator monetisation programme she set up

Esther Crawford, the ex-Twitter/X employee who was pictured sleeping on the floor of the social media company’s headquarters in order to meet deadlines set by platform owner Elon Musk, hasn’t held back now that she’s left the company – revealing she’s managed to nab some cash from a feature she set up.

Crawford, who worked in product at Twitter (later rebranded to X), was laid off in February after working on the platform’s paid subscription model Blue (later rebranded to X Premium) and has since shed some light on her experience working on the bird app.

In June, she shared a lengthy post on her time at Twitter and working under Musk, praising his “boldness, passion and storytelling” but adding his “lack of process and empathy is painful”.

She added: “At times it felt like the inner circle was too zealous and fanatical in their unwavering support of everything he said … It seemed he trusted random feedback more than the people in the room who spent their lives dedicated to tackling the problem at hand.”

Now Crawford has revealed she has earned a not too shabby $712.23 from X’s creator monetisation scheme, which requires shelling out $11 a month on an X Premium subscription, five million impressions in the last three months and at least 500 followers to access.

X’s Help Center article on ‘ads revenue sharing’ reads: “[It] lets you share revenue from verified user’s organic impressions of ads displayed in replies to content you post on X.

“This is part of our effort to help people earn a living directly on X.”

Revealing how much her recent posts were worth, Crawford tweeted on Saturday: “My very long con has finally paid off.

“1. Start a company. 2. Sell it to Twitter (now X). 3. Create the creator monetization program. 4. Leave Twitter. 5. Tweet about time at Twitter. 6. Profit from tweets about time at Twitter from the creator monetization program.

“Checkmate.”

She followed up the post with a more serious comment, however, noting it is “fun” to see users being paid for their tweets and that it is “quite meta” to be one of them.

Other X users have since praised Crawford’s “inspiring $700 gotcha” and said she is “winning” following the payout:

Smart move.

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