With the recent purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk, the app will get a new premium verification service that would run users $20 monthly. Additionally, he gave his staff a deadline and threatened to fire them if they did not finish developing the feature by then.
In contrast to the Twitter Blue membership, which grants access to more capabilities, Twitter wants to introduce a new service that will be significantly more costly.
The instruction is to change Twitter Blue, the firm’s $4.99 monthly optional premium that allows more functionality, into a more expensive subscription that already validates users, as per sources with knowledge of the issue and internal communication obtained by The Verge.
Presently, a monthly subscription to Twitter Blue costs $19.99. Verified users will have a subscription timeline of 90 days under the present arrangement in order to keep their blue checkmark. The project’s staff members received notice on Sunday that they must implement the new functionality by November 7 or risk being fired.
Almost a year back, Twitter Blue, which allows users to view ad-free content from specific sources and alter the app’s home screen icon, was made available. After going public, Twitter’s primary source of income was advertisement. Musk wants subscriptions to generate 50% of the company’s income.
Elon Musk promised to change how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots in the months before his takeover. The first person to disclose Twitter’s possible verification cost was Casey Newton of Platformer. The deal between Musk and Twitter to acquire the company for $54.20/share, or around $44 billion, was officially concluded on October 27, and the CEO and CFO were apparently terminated.
Elon Musk has only been Chief Twit since Friday, but already he has made significant modifications to Twitter, starting with altering the homepage for users who are not logged in. He is also preparing mass cutbacks of middle management and engineers who have not given enough to the code base in months, with the help of Tesla engineers he has hired as Twitter advisors. Managers already have compiled names of the individuals who will be laid off, and reductions are anticipated to start this week. Since Musk took over on Thursday night, his project managers have already been working nights and on the weekends.
Twitter Blue was launched in June the year before. The option to modify tweets was added at the beginning of October, after Musk set up a survey in April, in contrast to the upcoming premium verification and the current exclusive features. Over 70% of those in his audience who responded to a survey said they would utilize an edit function if one were available.
Based on previously reported results, Musk also hopes that the subscription service would bring in half of the overall revenue for the business, with the remaining half coming from advertising.
According to a different rumor, Musk also intends to modify the character restriction for Twitter tweets. Musk said that long-form tweets are substantial on the network when a Twitter user asked regarding raising the character limit for messages.