Elon Musk took over Twitter last week, becoming the social media platform’s ‘Chief Twit.’ In one of his first moves to combat spam and fake accounts Musk revealed his plans to make people pay to become a verified Twitter user.
After initially floating the idea of charging $20 per month, that amount has now been reduced to $8 per month, which will be “price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity.”
Subscribing to the service will give users the mythical blue checkmark next to their name, along with some other added benefits that will hopefully make it more palatable for the average user to pay the fee every month.
According to Musk, users will also be able to post longer messages beyond the current 140 character limit, post longer videos, and be subject to 50% fewer ads.
Verified users will also get “priority in replies, mentions & search,” which Musk says is key to reducing the amount of spam on the platform.
Finally, Musk said Twitter will also add a “paywall bypass” for publishers that are willing to work with Twitter. “This will also give Twitter a revenue stream to reward content creators,” Musk explained.
Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
Musk didn’t clarify when these changes will be implemented, but previous reports that claimed Musk was proposing a $20 monthly fee for Twitter Blue indicated engineers were given a deadline of November 7 to finalize the new system.
That deadline has not been confirmed by Musk, and it is not clear if it has changed now that the details of the program have also changed.
Musk has been busy at Twitter since paying $44 billion for the company last week. Soon after taking the helm Musk named himself CEO, and fired four executives including former CEO Parag Agrawal, Finance Chief Ned Segel and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde.
