Twitter: Elon Musk announces monthly subscription
This subscription at 8 euros per month is, in particular, to validate his account and be less exposed to advertising on Twitter.
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© Karl-Josef Hildenbrand / dpa / Karl-Josef Hildenbrand / dpa
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LHis rumor has been growing for several days. Having a certified account on Twitter will pay off. Elon Musk announced on Tuesday 1eh November, the launch of a monthly subscription at $8 per month to verify his account on this social network, which he had just acquired. This subscription should also allow you to be less exposed to advertising. According to information from Washington post, Elon Musk is also planning a new option to charge for watching videos published by users of the social network. So, a content creator who publishes a tweet with a video can choose to charge for access to the content between 1 and 10 dollars.
The social network already offers a subscription with paid features, since last year, but the general manager wants a new program, more expensive and more widely adopted. The ultimate goal is to increase the platform’s revenue streams. “The current system of lords and peasants, those with blue ticks and those without, is nonsense. Power to the people! Blue for $8 a month,” said the Tesla and SpaceX boss, who took to Twitter on Thursday.
So he plans to combine Twitter Blue — a $5-a-month subscription for a more comfortable reading mode and editing tools — and the ability for qualified accounts to verify and certify their identity. Currently, only certain profiles can request this blue tick token of authenticity, including governments, companies, media, political, cultural or sports personalities, etc. They can lose their badge if they don’t respect the rules of the platform. On Friday, Elon Musk asked engineers to work tirelessly on this system overhaul.
Twitter’s current system of lords and peasants for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
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“Twice as much advertising”
He said subscribers will have other benefits: their tweets will appear in priority, they will be able to post longer video and audio messages, and be exposed to “half the advertising”. Twitter Blue currently provides access to free, ad-free articles from hundreds of news sites such as Los Angeles Times.
This will still be the case in the new version “for publishers who are willing to work with us”, Elon Musk mentioned, without giving further details. Subscription price will be adjusted by country. “It will also bring revenue to Twitter to reward content creators,” he concluded.
The richest man in the world has repeated since the beginning of the process of taking power that he started this operation to strengthen the freedom of expression in this “public square” that is essential to democracy. He assured that profitability is not his priority. But Twitter is a network whose revenues come 90% from advertising and has never been very profitable compared to its Californian neighbors Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Google (YouTube). And Elon Musk may promise the tweeting platform won’t become unviable when he relaxes content moderation rules, some advertisers worry.
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“let them go to hell”
On Friday, automaker General Motors announced it was temporarily removing its ads from Twitter. The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) for its part recalled the importance for brands to eliminate “toxic content”. Income diversification therefore seems necessary. According to the expert site The Verge, Elon Musk first considered increasing the subscription price to 20 dollars per month.
“Twenty dollars a month to keep my blue badge?” Fuck them, they should just pay me. If it’s set up, I’m gone,” bestselling author Stephen King tweeted Monday. Elon Musk responded by suggesting eight dollars a month — with no apparent response from the writer. The the very idea of having to pay to get your account certified has drawn a lot of criticism.
“Appealing to Twitter users to earn more money may be the right strategy, but verification is not the place to pay,” commented Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg. “Certification is supposed to ensure the authenticity of accounts and conversations on the platform, it is not a premium tool to improve the experience of users who have access to it,” he added.
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