Washington:
Twitter boss Elon Musk announced in a series of tweets on Saturday that the company’s subscription service would show fewer ads to users, including an ad-free tier.
The announcement comes as the social network has faced significant economic uncertainty since being acquired by Musk in October.
“Ads are too frequent on Twitter and too large. Take steps to address both in the coming weeks,” Musk posted on his Twitter account Saturday.
And for those who choose it, “there will be a more expensive plan that allows zero ads,” Musk added.
That would be a radical change in Twitter’s business model, which previously 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-strong workforce late last year. The move sparked concerns that the company was understaffed to moderate content and scare governments and advertisers.
Musk said his strategy was to cut costs massively while building revenue at the same time, and that a new subscription service called Twitter Blue, which gives users a sought-after blue verification checkmark for a fee, would help achieve that goal.
The service costs $11 per 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, at a discount, $84 per year.
Twitter Blue is currently available in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.
Musk-led Twitter has been torn by chaos, with mass layoffs, the return of banned accounts and the suspension of journalists critical of the South African-born billionaire.
Musk’s acquisition also spawned a wave of racist or hateful tweets, drawing criticism from regulators and driving away major advertisers, Twitter’s main source of revenue.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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