Web subscriptions are also available for $8 per month or discounted for $84 per year. (File)
Washington:
Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced in a series of tweets on Saturday that the company’s subscription service would show users fewer ads, including an ad-free tier.
The announcement comes as the social network has faced a lot of economic uncertainty since its acquisition by Musk in October.
“Ads are too common on Twitter and too big. We are taking steps to address both in the coming weeks,” Musk posted on his Twitter account on Saturday.
And for those who choose to do so, “there will be a more expensive subscription that doesn’t allow ads,” Musk added.
That would be a radical shift in Twitter’s business model, which has traditionally relied on targeted advertising to generate revenue before launching a paid subscription service in mid-December.
But advertising has been a question mark for Twitter lately after Musk laid off about half of the company’s 7,500 employees late last year. The move sparked concerns that the company lacked the staff to handle content moderation, scaring governments and advertisers.
Musk said his strategy is to massively cut costs while building revenue, and that a new subscription service called Twitter Blue, which grants users a coveted blue verification tick for a fee, would help achieve that goal.
The service costs $11 a month in the United States and is available on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems, according to a page on the company’s website.
Web subscriptions are also available for $8 per month or discounted for $84 per year.
Twitter Blue is currently available in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.
Musk-run Twitter has been roiled in chaos, with mass layoffs, the return of suspended accounts and the suspension of journalists who criticized the South African-born billionaire.
Musk’s acquisition also led to a surge in racist or hateful tweets, which came under scrutiny from regulators and large advertisers, Twitter’s main source of revenue, were banned.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a syndicated feed.)
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