Elon Musk Plans to Make X (Twitter) Completely Paid-For Platform
American billionaire Elon Musk intends to transition the social network X (formerly Twitter) to a fully paid model.
This information comes via Variety, citing his conversation with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Musk believes that shifting to a monthly fee for using X is the only way to address the issue of bots effectively. However, he did not specify the exact amount or the timeline for implementing this change.
According to Musk, the X platform has 550 million active users each month, who create 100-200 million posts on the social network daily. Nevertheless, as of mid-July, the platform experienced a nearly 50% decline in advertising revenue and substantial debt burdens.
It's worth noting that the subscription program, previously known as Twitter Blue and now rebranded as X Blue by Musk, offers features starting from $8 per month. These features include:
- Editing a post within an hour of posting.
- A 2x reduction in displayed advertisements.
- Priority ranking of posts in search results.
- The ability to publish posts with up to 25,000 characters, compared to the previous limit of 280 characters.
- The ability to upload videos up to 3 hours in length or with a size of up to 8 gigabytes.
Subscribers to X Blue also have the right to a share of advertising revenue, initially based on ads displayed in response to their posts.
In October 2022, after Musk reluctantly terminated a heavily indebted deal with Twitter worth $44 billion, he dismissed Twitter's top leadership team and appointed himself as CEO. Subsequently, Musk oversaw mass layoffs at Twitter, reducing the company's workforce by approximately 80%.
Earlier this year, Musk hired former head of sales at NBC Universal, Linda Yaccarino, as the CEO. Since joining the company in June, she has recruited a group of new sales executives.
However, Musk ultimately retains control over X/Twitter (for instance, in July, he renamed the company using his favorite letter of the alphabet) and has stated that he will continue to manage the company's product and technology teams.
As reported by The Gaze, the recent announcement by X, formerly known as Twitter, has raised legitimate concerns about privacy. A recent update to the platform's privacy policy indicates that Elon Musk intends to collect users' biometric and professional data.