Elon Musk, who has declared himself the CEO following his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, said the social media platform will charge $8 (AED29.38) per month to verify users’ accounts.
Musk said the plan would solve the company’s issues with bots and trolls, and also create a new revenue stream for the company.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO confirmed this in a reply to author Stephen King’s expletive tweet on the platform’s earlier plans of charging $20 a month, after a story was published by The Verge which said Musk had given engineers a deadline by November 7 to develop a paying verification product or lose their job.
Verification is a safety measure to distinguish real people from impersonators on Twitter and other social media handles, but Musk wants to commercialise it. There are an estimated 400,000 blue-check Twitter accounts in the world.
In his reply to King, Musk, who recently changed his bio on the social network from ‘Chief Twit’ to ‘Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator’, said: “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?”
King responded: “It ain’t the money, it’s the principal of the thing.”
Musk made a series of tweets about his plans, saying the monthly payment would include “priority in replies, mentions and search, ability to post long video and audio, half as many ads, and paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us”.
Twitter Blue currently allows users to access certain news sites for free and without ads, such as the Los Angeles Times.
“This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” Musk added.
The Washington Post reported earlier this week that Musk plans to fire some 75 percent of his company’s 7,500 employees.
However, there seems to be an exodus of top management from the company, with Reuters reporting that its advertising and marketing chiefs have left.
Musk started his reign by firing CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.
Sarah Personette, who was chief customer officer and ad boss, tweeted on Tuesday that she resigned last week. Chief People and Diversity Officer Dalana Brand said in a LinkedIn post that she had resigned as well. General manager for core technologies Nick Caldwell confirmed his departure from the company.
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