Elon Musk’s social media platform X is testing a new three-tiered membership plan, CEO Linda Yaccarino disclosed during a meeting with shareholders. The current X Premium or Twitter Blue subscription, which costs $8 per month, will most likely be divided into three categories: Basic, Standard, and Plus. This adjustment is intended to increase revenue from users who may have been hesitant to pay the full premium subscription charge.
Ad-supported subscription tiers
According to Bloomberg, the three membership levels would allow the corporation to charge users different amounts based on the number of adverts presented. According to researcher @Aaronp613, the X Premium Basic plan will display full advertisements, while the X Premium Standard plan will display half the number of adverts. The X Premium Plus tier will completely be ad-free.
All users must pay a monthly charge
In addition to the new subscription plans, Musk has other plans for charging X users in the works. In a more recent development, Musk stated during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that X would implement a small monthly fee for all users as a solution to the bot problem. The cost is expected to dissuade bot makers from maintaining several bogus accounts, hence improving the overall user experience and platform integrity.
Musk must repay X’s mounting debt
Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter left the San Francisco-based company with a $13 billion debt. His erratic decision-making and lax content-safety measures have alarmed some marketers. Twitter was generating roughly $5 billion in annual revenue prior to Musk’s acquisition and rebranding to X, with nearly 90% of it coming from advertising. Now, X must recoup that revenue while paying an estimated $1.2 billion in annual interest on its debt, as previously reported by Bloomberg.
Advertisers are back, and income is increasing: CEO
Yaccarino has indicated that revenue in advertising, data licensing, and subscriptions is expanding in the high single-digit quarter over quarter.
According to Yaccarino, over 90% of the company’s top 100 advertisers have returned, up from 75% in June.
However, ad spending has not yet hit historical highs, and businesses are boosting their budgets cautiously. The new membership levels have the potential to increase income and attract additional advertisers to the platform.