The new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, announced on Tuesday on the platform the upcoming launch of a subscription at US$8 per month for users wishing to have their account certified as authentic and to be less exposed to advertising.
The social network has offered a subscription to paid features since last year, but the general manager wants a new offer, more expensive and more widely adopted, which will diversify the sources of income for the platform.
“The current system of lords and peasants, with those who have the blue tick and those who don’t, is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8 a month,” said the Tesla and SpaceX boss, who acquired Twitter on Thursday.
So he’s considering melding together Twitter Blue — a US$5-a-month subscription (CA$6.50 in Canada) for a more comfortable reading mode and editing tools — and the ability for eligible accounts to get verified 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 do not respect the rules of the platform.
More advantages
As of Friday, Elon Musk asked engineers to work tirelessly on this overhaul of the system.
He said that subscribers would have other advantages: their tweets will appear in priority, they will be able to post longer videos and audio messages, and will be exposed to “half the advertising”.
Twitter Blue currently provides access to free, ad-free articles from hundreds of news sites, such as the Los Angeles Times.
This will still be the case in the new version “for publishers ready to work with us”, mentioned Elon Musk without giving further details.
The subscription price will be adjusted according to the country.
“It will also bring revenue to Twitter to reward content creators,” he concluded.
The richest man in the world has repeated since the start of the eventful takeover process that he had embarked on this operation to strengthen freedom of expression in this “public square” essential to democracy.
He assured that profitability was not his priority. But Twitter is a network whose revenues come 90% from advertising and which has never been very profitable compared to its Californian neighbors Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Google (YouTube).
Fears of users and advertisers
And Elon Musk may promise that the tweeting platform will not become unlivable when he relaxes the rules of content moderation, some advertisers are worried.
On Friday, automaker General Motors announced that it is temporarily removing its ads from Twitter. The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) for its part recalled the importance for brands that “toxic content” be removed.
Diversifying income therefore seems necessary. According to the specialized site The VergeElon Musk first considered raising the subscription price to US$20 per month.
“Twenty dollars a month to keep my blue badge?” Fuck them, they should pay me instead. If it’s set up, I’m out,” bestselling author Stephen King tweeted on Monday.
Elon Musk had responded by suggesting eight dollars a month – with no apparent response from the writer.
The very idea of having to pay to have your account certified has drawn a lot of criticism.
“Appealing to Twitter users to make more money may be the right strategy, but verification isn’t the place to pay,” commented Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg.
“The 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,” she added.