Elon Musk had been talking about it for a few weeks, kind of floating the idea out there to see what people would think. And now it’s official. X (Twitter) is going to start charging new users to even use the platform.
The official Support X account has announced that they are starting to test a new program in New Zealand and the Philippines, where unverified accounts will now be required to sign up for a $1 annual subscription to X. This subscription would be needed to post, and interact with other posts. The Support channel did mention that during this test, existing users are not affected.
So why is X doing this test? They claim that this is the only way to combat the bots on the platform. Apparently, bots can’t afford $1 per year. Which equates to about $0.08 per month.
X claims that this is not a profit driver, which despite all of the conspiracy theories out there, sounds very true. Twitter only has about 335 total monthly active users, and that number continues to decrease. Meaning that if every existing user paid $1 per year, that would be $335 million. That might sound like a lot, but for a company like X (Twitter), it’s really not.
This change is sending more users over to Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon
It seems every time Elon Musk makes some big announcement like this, his competitors are the beneficiary. Threads has been getting a good number of users over the past week or so. People coming back to the platform, or creating new accounts, due to many changes Musk has made. And that’s only picking up steam now.
Musk seems to be Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest public relations rep these days. As everything he does, makes Zuckerberg look good. Who would have thought, that in 2023, we would see Meta as the good company in social media.