Elon Musk unveils plans to make X (Twitter) a paid-for platform
Elon Musk is planning to make X (previously often known as Twitter) a paid-for platform for all customers.
In a bid to sort out the problem of rampant bot exercise, he unveiled proposals to roll out small month-to-month subscriptions throughout a reside dialog with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Musk didn’t specify how a lot the plans would price or what options could be included on the lowest tier.
Nevertheless, he did declare that X now has 550 million month-to-month customers that sometimes put up 100 million to 200 million posts a day – though it’s not but recognized what quantity of this knowledge is bots versus genuine customers.
This marks a 140% enhance on the “common monetizable every day energetic utilization” of 229 million reported by Twitter in Might 2022, earlier than Musk’s takeover.
Why we care. Transitioning X to a paid platform could possibly be excellent news for advertisers as a result of it’d imply they get a better-quality viewers and fewer issues with bots. That would result in extra conversions and the next ROI. However there’s a draw back: some customers may ditch X totally free alternate options like Threads, which may shrink the platform’s consumer base and, in flip, cut back the attain of X advertisers.
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What has X mentioned? Musk advised Prime Minister, Netanyahu:
- “The only most necessary motive that we’re shifting to having a small month-to-month cost to be used of the X system is that it’s the one method I can consider to fight huge armies of bots.”
- “As a result of a bot prices a fraction of a penny, or a tenth of a penny, but when any person even has to pay just a few {dollars} or one thing, some minor quantity, the efficient price of bots may be very excessive, and then you definitely additionally must get a brand new cost methodology each time you’ve got a brand new bot.”
- “We’re really going to come back out with decrease tier pricing. We wish it to be only a small amount of cash [and] for my part, that is really the one protection in opposition to huge armies of bots.”
Deep dive. Learn the X weblog for extra details about the platform’s newest updates.
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Nicola Agius is Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land after becoming a member of in 2023. She covers paid search, paid social, retail media and extra. Previous to this, she was search engine marketing Director at Jungle Creations (2020-2023), overseeing the corporate’s editorial technique for a number of web sites. She has over 15 years of expertise in journalism and has beforehand labored at OK! Journal (2010-2014), Mail On-line (2014-2015), Mirror (2015-2017), Digital Spy (2017-2018) and The Solar (2018-2020). She additionally beforehand teamed up with search engine marketing company Blue Array to co-author Amazon bestselling guide ‘Mastering In-Home search engine marketing’.
