Guwahati: Elon Musk the CEO of Tesla on Tuesday unveiled a new iteration of “Twitter Blue,” for which he intended to charge USD 8 per month in exchange for priority in responses, mentions, and searches.
Taking to Twitter, Musk said, “Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for USD 8/month.”
The news that Twitter would charge users USD 19.99 (more than Rs 1600) for the new Twitter Blue subscription, which adds extra functionality like editing and undoing tweets, prompted this announcement, according to a number of media reports.
Tesla CEO further added that the new service will get the users “Priority in replies, mentions and search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam – Ability to post long vihdeo & audio – Half as many ads.”
“Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity,” he tweeted.
Musk added that the new service will enable Twitter to pay content producers through a revenue stream.
CNN reports that Stephen King’s tweet served as the catalyst for the entire situation. King tweeted on Monday, “$20 per month to maintain my blue check?” followed with a profanity. “They must reimburse me. I’m gone like Enron if that is implemented.” It’s the principle of the thing, not the money, King wrote in response to this later.
Early on Tuesday morning, Musk responded to King with a peculiar retort and a suggestion to charge for account verification. “We must find a way to pay the bills! Twitter’s reliance on advertisers is not absolute ” he said.
The Twitter Blue membership became publicly available over a year ago as a way to read articles from some publishers without ads and make other changes to the app, such changing the colour of the app’s icon on the home screen.
Twitter agreed to accept Musk’s offer to purchase and privatise the social media platform in April. Musk quickly cast doubt on his willingness to uphold the deal, claiming that the business had not fully disclosed the quantity of spam and phoney accounts using the site. Elon Musk, who had previously expressed interest in purchasing Twitter, abruptly ended the agreement in July. The Tesla CEO said that by exaggerating the quantity of spam and false bot accounts on its network, Twitter had broken the terms of their mutual purchase agreement. The market had a strong fall following Musk’s announcement of the contract termination. Later, Twitter sued Musk alleging that he had used bots as a cover to back out of a transaction. Last week, Musk reiterated that he will proceed with the purchase of Twitter at the initially agreed-upon price of USD 54.20 per share