Twitter will charge $8 a month for its Blue service, which includes its sought-after “verified” badge, new CEO Elon Musk said.
Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44 billion, is aiming to boost subscriptions and make the social media network less reliant on ads.
“Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month,” Musk said in a tweet. Twitter will be adjusting the price by “country proportionate to purchasing power parity.”
A blue check mark next to a person’s or company’s user name on the social media platform means Twitter has confirmed that the account belongs to the person or company claiming it. Twitter is currently free for most users. Twitter does not offer the blue mark to all though you still own the account.
Elon Musk on Tuesday said subscribers with blue check marks would get priority in replies, mentions and search and would be able to post longer videos and audios. They would see half as many ads.
He also offered subscribers a pay wall bypass from “publishers willing to work with us.”
Musk’s comments follow media reports that he was looking at the process of profile verification and how the blue check marks were given. Twitter used to give these to noteworthy profiles based on its own criteria.
More than 80 percent of Twitter users who took part in a recent poll said they would not pay for the checkmark. Some 10 percent said they were willing to pay $5 a month.
Twitter already has a subscription service called Twitter Blue, which was launched in June last year and offers access to features such as an option to edit tweets.
Separately, S&P Global Ratings downgraded Twitter to B- on significant debt increase following the acquisition.
Twitter’s Q2 2022 monetizable daily active usage (mDAU) was 237.8 million, up 16.6 percent compared to Q2 of the prior year. Twitter reported Q2 revenue of $1.18 billion (–1 percent) with advertising revenue of $1.08 billion (+2 percent) and subscription revenue of $101 million (–27 percent). Twitter posted operating loss of $344 million compared to operating income of $30 million.
