Washington: Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday announced a new version of “Twitter Blue” where he plans to charge up to USD 8 per month for Twitter’s subscription service with priority in replies, mentions and searches. . Musk said on Twitter, “Twitter’s current Lords & Farmers system that has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is crap. Power to the people! Blue for 8 USD/month.
“This announcement comes from various media reports that Twitter is planning to charge users USD 19.99 (over Rs 1600) for the new Twitter Blue subscription that brings additional features like editing and undoing tweets. The Tesla CEO further said that the new service will get users “priority in replies, mentions and searches, which is essential to defeat spam/scam – the ability to post long videos and audios – over half of ads.”
“Price adjusted by country is proportional to purchasing power parity,” he tweeted. Musk also said the new service would give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators. It all started with a tweet by author Stephen King, according to CNN. On Monday, King tweeted, “$20 a month to keep my blue check?” Then an aberration. “They should pay me. If that gets established, I’m gone like Enron.” After a later reply, the king wrote, “[i]It’s not money, it’s the principle of the thing.”
Musk responded Tuesday morning with his bizarre reply to King and a proposal to charge for account verification. ,[W]E needs to pay the bills somehow! Twitter can’t rely solely on advertisers,” he said. According to CNN, “What about $8?”
Twitter Blue subscriptions launched widely about a year ago as a way for some publishers to view ad-free articles and make other changes to the app, such as a different colored home screen icon. In April, Twitter accepted Musk’s offer to buy and take the social media service privately. However, Musk soon began to have doubts about his intentions to comply with the agreement, alleging that the company failed to adequately disclose the number of spam and fake accounts on the service.
In July, in a surprising turn of events, Elon Musk, who had long shown his interest in buying Twitter, terminated the deal. The Tesla CEO did this by alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform. After Musk announced the termination of the deal, the market saw a sharp drop.
Later, Twitter sued Musk, accusing him of using bots as an excuse to pull out of a deal. Again, last week, Musk confirmed that he would go ahead with the Twitter purchase at the originally agreed price of USD 54.20 per share.