Elon Musk is considering charging Twitter users $20 a month or $240 a year for a blue tick on their account, as the world’s richest person prepares an overhaul to twitter.
Musk is planning changes to Twitter’s Blue subscription service, according to tech newsletter Platformer, including raising the $4.99 a month fee to $19.99. Users verified by the platform who carry a blue tick flagging them as a trustworthy source would have 90 days to sign up to Blue or lose their check mark.
Musk did not comment directly on the story but tweeted to his more than 110 million followers on Sunday:
He also flagged a Twitter poll launched on Monday morning asking Twitter users how much they would pay a month for a blue tick: $5; $10; $15; or “wouldn’t pay”. The poll was set up by the tech investor Jason Calacanis, a Musk associate who is part of a team brought in by the multibillionaire to help run the business since the $44 Billion takeover. A basic subscription on Netflix costs $6.99.
In another hint at a big changes at the company, Musk launched a poll on Monday asking users if he should bring back Vine, the video-sharing app viewed as a precursor to TikTok but shut down by Twitter in 2016.
Musk indicated that challenging TikTok would be a motive for the move in an exchange with YouTube star Mr Beast, who wrote “if you did that and actually competed with tik tok that’d be hilarious.” Musk replied: “What could we do to make it better than TikTok?”. Twitter has 230 million users, compared with more than 1 billion on TikTok.
He has also pledged to keep content policies in place and maintain bans on restricted accounts until a Twitter content moderation council, announced by the billionaire last week.
