X will begin charging new users $1 a year to access key features including the ability to tweet and retweet.
fortune.com
X (Twitter) to soon begin charging $1 annual subscription in order to tweet and interact.
Next move must be to charge users deleting their accounts $1. And Elon can sell your data to make more money.
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I'm gonna call it. This is an (obvious) attempt to squeak in monetization for everyone on twitter that is as unobjectionable as possible, and once everyone's locked in the price will increase, and tiers will be introduced, etc etc., and it's going to work. Nobody still on twitter is gonna care about $1/year to keep access. They'll lap it up and thank Musk for the opportunity to be fleeced.
Musk could still fuck it up by being overly greedy and ramping up too much too fast like he tried to do last year (or this year? I've lost track), but I'd say this has reasonable odds of working out.
Elon simps are already going "lol $1 i literally paid more than that for my coffee"
and then the capitalism admirers: "I don't have problem to pay for a good service. What do you people think? Isn't it costly to run a good service?"
Yeah except that the spammers already have blue checkmarks. They're already paying.
I'm not so sure about that. The internet is littered with companies that gave away their product for free hoping users would pay for premium features. When they didn't and the companies then had to charge a minimum entry fee for everyone, people dropped the product. There's a barrier to putting in your credit card. Lots of people just aren't interested.
There are also a whole lot of governmental, health and official bodies where putting through an invoice is a real pain in the bum. It forces a decision whereas previously if had been a simple business as usual process
You're definitely right about that being the general result to these sorts of moves, but I don't think it'll apply as harshly to this situation. Like I said, anyone still on the site has already faced numerous insults and abuse at the hands of Musk. They want to be there despite all of that, or maybe even because of it. I do think a $1/month or something higher would be pretty likely to fail, but $1/year is such a low-level ask and will gently push the users there past the barrier to where the price can be raised higher later.
The amount being asked isn't the barrier I'm referring to. Twitter could be charging one penny, and they'd still lose this particular group. Consumers have been burned by entering a credit card for a low or free trial only later to discover sudden fees they couldn't get refunded. The only protection is to not give your credit card.
Not really. I was working with the communications department of a large local authority in London recently. They use Twitter/X as a broadcast medium for public snnouncements via Hootsuite. I don't think they had noticed any disruption at all. Similarly with Public Health and the NHS
Musk wants Twitter to become a 'platform for everything'. Having a payment system in place everyone uses already is key for that.
Not going to say that this is a good idea, but thats the rational.
I think he's expecting a tax break from twitter