By Sheila Dang

(Reuters) – Twitter Inc will now allow people to tip their favorite content creators with bitcoin and will also launch a fund to pay some users who host audio chat rooms on its Spaces feature, the company said on Thursday.

The company also said it will test new ways to help users have a safer experience on Twitter, such as warning when people are entering a “heated” conversation, or letting them leave tweet threads they no longer want to be part of.

The product announcements are the latest in Twitter's effort to compete with rival platforms like facebook and Alphabet Inc's YouTube for popular content creators with large followings, and turn around its image as a site where polarized discussions can fester online.

Twitter users globally on iOS devices can now send and receive digital payments, which was previously limited to a small group of testers.

“We believe we can continue to incentivize the types of conversations that people want to see,” said Esther Crawford, product lead for creator monetization at Twitter, in a briefing with reporters.

The San Francisco-based company added it is exploring how to allow users to filter out certain words they do not want to see in the replies to their tweets, which could be used to stop name-calling or abusive speech.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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