Get ready to pay up for X.
Elon Musk says his social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, is pivoting towards a subscription model.
He made the comments during his live-streamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He said the social network, “is moving to having a small monthly payment to use X.”
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This means everyone would have to pay to use the site.
Musk says it’s in order to combat the, “vast armies of bots.”
Musk didn't say how much a new plan would cost users or what features would or wouldn’t be included with payment.
Tech
Nolan Higdon is a professor of communication at Cal State East Bay and says many social media sites are looking to make a profit and are throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.
He says this is simply the latest effort in the industry to recuperate revenue.
But will it work? Higdon thinks it may be too late.
“I think with social media it’s been almost two decades now social media has been around so the idea of seeing if users like it enough to pay for it, in my estimation, it might have been too long,” he said. “There are simply other platforms people can engage with that still do not charge a monthly fee. Obviously there’s up teen things to do for entertainment in the digital world, so I imagine that this might be too little too late.”
During the livestream, Musk said X now has 550 million monthly users who generate up to 200 million posts per day there.
However, Musk didn’t disclose how many of the company’s monthly users are authentic, versus bots.
Also, no word on when the subscription service would start.
