Elon Musk, the company’s new owner, revealed on Tuesday that Twitter will begin charging users $8 per month for the blue verification badge.
The change occurs a few days after Mr. Musk finished his $44 billion purchase of the business.
Twitter’s present lords and peasants system for determining who has or does not have a blue checkmark is nonsense, according to Mr. Musk in a tweet on Tuesday.
“Power to the people!” he concluded. $8/month for Blue. Price adjustments made according to purchasing power parity per nation
Additionally, the verified accounts will “get priority in replies, mentions, and search, the ability to post extended video and audio, and half as many advertising.” Additionally, he noted, users would be able to get around paywalls for “publishers willing to collaborate with us.”
He claimed that this will provide Twitter with a cash stream to compensate content producers.
According to Mr. Musk, public figures would have a secondary tag underneath their names, as is presently the case with politicians.
On Sunday, Mr. Musk claimed that Twitter was updating its verification procedure.
He stated, “The entire verification procedure is currently being revised.”
The Verge, a digital news outlet based in the US, reported on Monday that Elon Musk’s company intends to increase the price of its optional $4.99/month premium Twitter Blue subscription to $19.99/month.
The concept, according to the website, entails adding authentication as a feature to Twitter Blue, the platform’s membership service that is currently optional and costs $4.99 per month.
According to the article, verified users now have 90 days to pay the increased amount for a subscription or risk losing their blue tick.
Employees were informed about the project on Sunday and told they had to start the program by November 7 or risk losing their jobs, according to the report.
According to The Verge, Mr. Musk wants subscriptions to rise to make about half of the company’s overall revenue.
SUCCESSING TWITTER
Last Thursday, Mr. Musk bought Twitter after completing his $44 billion purchase agreement for the business.
Mr. Musk sacked the company’s top management as soon as he bought it.
According to reports, Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of legal affairs and policy Vijaya Gadde have all been fired from their positions.
Following the completion of the transaction, Mr. Agrawal and Mr. Segal were led from Twitter’s San Francisco offices, according to Reuters.
Mr. Musk told Twitter advertisers in a message last Thursday that social messaging services wouldn’t become into “a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be spoken with no consequences!”
“I bought Twitter because I believe it is crucial for society to have a shared digital town square where a variety of viewpoints can be discussed civilly and without using force.
According to Mr. Musk’s letter, “there is currently tremendous risk that social media may splinter into far-right wing and far-left-wing echo chambers that breed more hate and divide our society.”
The bird has been liberated, Mr. Musk wrote in a tweet on Friday.
Earlier, Mr. Musk modified his Twitter profile to identify himself as “Chief Twit” and to specify Twitter headquarters as his place of residence.
In the meantime, Mr. Musk disbanded the board of directors and declared himself the sole director of the business in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made public on Monday.
According to the terms of the Merger Agreement, the following individuals who were directors of Twitter prior to the Merger’s effective time are no longer directors of Twitter as of the Merger’s effective time.
In the filing, Mr. Musk mentioned “Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li, and Mimi Alemayehou.”
