Musk Touts ‘Slight Cost’ For Business Use Of Twitter

Tom Jowitt,
twitter, social media

Twitter for ‘casual users’ will remain fee, tweets Elon Musk, but businesses using Twitter will be subjected to ‘slight fee’

Elon Musk has begun to publicly outline his vision for Twitter going forward, after the board of directors accepted his $44 billion takeover offer.

Musk’s tweets have been closely examined, ever since it was revealed on 2 April that he had acquired more than 9 percent of the microblogging platform.

Musk was slated last week when he engaged with a couple of tweets from right-wing commentators that criticised senior Twitter executives. This resulted in a direct rebuke from former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, and more subtle pushback from Twitter’s current CEO Parag Agrawal.

Image credit: Tesla
Image credit: Tesla

Business cost

In the intervening period Elon Musk continued to provoke reactions on Twitter. On Monday he retweeted his post noting his intentions for 2022.

When he attended the annual Met Gala in New York on Monday, Musk said he wanted to expand Twitter from its current “niche” role until “most of America” was using it.

“Right now it’s sort of niche. I want a much bigger percentage of the country to be on it, engaging in dialogue,” he said.

He added that he wanted it to be “as broadly inclusive as possible, where ideally most of America is on it and talking” and as trusted as possible.

Then on Tuesday Musk revealed his intention charge businesses a ‘slight cost’ for using Twitter, which he outlined in a tweet about demise of Freemasons offering free stonecutting services.

There has also been speculation that Musk may begin charging for embedding tweets.

Money-making

It should be noted what Musk is proposing is nothing particularly new.

Twitter’s existing management has been exploring ways to make additional revenues for a while now, after investors previously called for Twitter to generate additional revenue streams.

For example in 2021 Twitter revealed a paid subscription service called ‘Twitter Blue.’

Costing $2.99 (£2.49) a month, Twitter Blue gives users advanced features, including an ‘undo’ option and ‘collection’ facility for tweets.

Prior to that in July 2020, former CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed the platform was actively exploring a possible subscription model.

Twitter was said to be developing a subscription product as a way to ease its dependence on advertising, and was also considering adding charges for ‘power’ users of the platform.

Twitter also introduced a feature called Tip Jar that allows users to send money directly to other accounts.