Elon Musk is proposing an $8-per-month fee for users to maintain a verified account on Twitter.
Key Details
- Twitter’s ad sales are low, coming in at billions under what other big name companies are bringing in per year.
- In order to get Twitter’s revenue numbers up, Elon Musk is considering adding some changes to the platform.
- The biggest change he has suggested—charging people to keep their verified blue check.
Why it’s important
Elon Musk has been making big changes to Twitter including sweeping it clean of most former employees including the entire board of directors.
Now the newest news to hit is that Twitter’s advertising revenue is low and Musk is trying to figure out how to fix creating other forms of revenue.
In 2021, Twitter’s total revenue came in at $5.1 billion with $4.5 billion being advertising. While $4.5 billion is a large amount of money it does not compare to the numbers being brought in by other platforms.
For example, look at what other big companies made in advertising revenue for 2021:
- Alphabet (Google) – $209.5 billion
- Meta (Facebook) – $114.9 billion
- Amazon – $31 billion
- Microsoft – $10 billion
These companies brought in billions more than Twitter did last year and for some advertising is not a big focus point like Amazon who primarily focuses on retail.
How To Fix
Musk has realized that something needs to be done in order to get Twitter’s revenue numbers up and he has floated around some ideas.
One idea he has that has made a lot of people unhappy—paying a subscription cost for a blue check mark verification.
Musk has discussed on the platform to make users that have a verification pay a monthly fee to keep it. He has floated a price of anywhere between $8 a monthly to $20.
This idea has many famous individuals unhappy considering that if they do not pay this monthly fee it would be easy for Twitter users to impersonate them on the platform.
Author Stephen King tweeted his disdain of the idea, “$20 a month to keep my blue check?” he tweeted. “…they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”
Musk responded saying “Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers.”
The monthly subscription hasn’t been instituted yet as Musk toys with other ideas to bring in revenue for the company.
