Billionaire Elon Musk has declared that Twitter Blue, the company’s paid verification feature will now cost $8 per month as against $19.99 as initially proposed.
Interestingly I don’t think he did any cost benefit analysis. He arrived at the price when celebrated horror author said in a colourful way that he wasn’t going to pay $20 a month to keep his blue check.
Since he is the sole director, he can choose any price he wants. He responded to Stephen King by saying the company needed to pay the bills somehow and it couldn’t rely on advertisers. He then suggested $8
“I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”
“Twitter’s current lords and peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month”
He also tweeted that the price would be adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity. He also added that Twitter Blue subscribers will get “Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam – Ability to post long video & audio – Half as many ads.”
They will also get paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with Twitter.
He says that the charge will give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators. He mentioned that “there will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians.”
This change is just of the many changes we should expect in Twitter after the billionaire took over and fired the top executives last week.
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