UPDATE: Twitter May Introduce Subscription Fees

The company is looking to create a paid-for version of its popular app Tweetdeck, it said. That could raise the possibility that it will charge suscription fees to use – a major break from its own strategy as well as those used by every other major social media company.

Like its rivals, Twitter has looked to make money through advertising. But unlike Facebook and the range of companies it owns like Instagram, that advertising revenue hasn't worked out to enough to allow it to turn a profit.

That has meant that despite increased usage and interest after posts from users including out-spoken President donald Trump, the site is still loosing money.

Twitter is conducting a survey "to assess the interest in a new, more enhanced version of Tweetdeck," spokeswoman Brielle Villablanca said in a statement on Thursday.

She went on: "We regularly conduct user research to gather feedback about people's Twitter experience and to better inform our product investment decisions, and we're exploring several ways to make Tweetdeck even more valuable for professionals."

That version could include "more powerful tools to help marketers, journalists, professionals, and others in our community find out what is happening in the world quicker," according to one of the screenshots posted on the account @andrewtavani.

The experience could be ad-free, the description said.

In the fourth quarter of 2016, Twitter posted the slowest revenue growth since it went public four years earlier, and revenue from advertising fell year-over-year. The company also said that advertising revenue growth would continue to lag user growth during 2017.