Elon Musk reveals plans to turn X (Twitter), into a paid platform
Elon Musk is planning to make X (formerly known as Twitter) a paid-for platform for all users.
In a bid to tackle the issue of rampant bot activity, he unveiled proposals to roll out small monthly subscriptions during a live conversation with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Musk did not specify how much the plans would cost or what features would be included at the lowest tier.
However, he did claim that X now has 550 million monthly users that typically post 100 million to 200 million posts a day – although it’s not yet known what proportion of this data is bots versus authentic users.
This marks a 140% increase on the “average monetizable daily active usage” of 229 million reported by Twitter in May 2022, before Musk’s takeover.
Why we care. Transitioning X to a paid platform could be good news for advertisers because it might mean they get a better-quality audience and fewer problems with bots. This could result in more conversions and higher ROI. There’s a downside, however: Some users may ditch X in favor of free alternatives such as Threads. This could reduce the user base for X and, therefore, the reach of X’s advertisers. What has X said about this?
Musk told Prime Minister, Netanyahu:
“The single most important reason that we’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system is that it’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots. “: Because a bot only costs a fraction or a tenth, if someone has to pay even a few dollars, it’s a very high cost. And then, you have to find a different payment method for every new bot. We’re going to lower the pricing. It should be a very small amount of money. In my opinion, this is the only way to combat vast armies bots.”
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Nicola Agius, who joined Search Engine Land in 2023, is the Paid Media editor. She is responsible for paid search, social media, retail and other areas. She was previously the SEO Director for Jungle Creations, overseeing multiple websites’ editorial strategy. She has worked in journalism for over 15 years and previously at OK! She has worked at OK! Magazine (2010-2014), Mail Online(2014-2015), Mirror(2015-2017), Digital Spy(2017) and The Sun (2018). She has also worked with SEO agency Blue Array in the past to co-author a bestselling Amazon book titled ‘Mastering Inhouse SEO’.