TECH NEWS – Elon Musk could flip the switch to turn X – the social network formerly known as Twitter – into a fully subscription-based platform.

Elon Musk floated the idea of making X/Twitter free for all its users during a wide-ranging discussion focused on artificial intelligence, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended on Monday. “We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk told Netanyahu, claiming that “it’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots.” His comments were initially reported by Bloomberg’s Dave Lee.

Musk didn’t mention the timing of his plan for X/Twitter users, nor did he say exactly how much it would cost, saying only that a monthly fee of “a few dollars or so” would discourage the creation of bot accounts.

Musk says X has 550 million monthly active users. They share 100-200 million posts a day on the social network.

According to industry news site Platformer, Musk has previously considered the idea of putting Twitter entirely behind a paywall in internal discussions. Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said that X/Twitter’s advertising sales have plummeted by 50% since he bought the company. “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk wrote on July 15.

Currently, X’s subscription program – formerly Twitter Blue, now X Blue in Musk’s rebranding effort – starts at $8 a month.

Other benefits of X Blue include the ability to edit posts within an hour. Other benefits include 50% fewer ads. The ability to “rank” a user’s posts in conversations and search. Also, the ability to post up to 25,000 characters (as opposed to the 280-character limit). And, the ability to upload videos up to 3 hours or 8 gigabytes in size. Blue subscribers will also be entitled to a share of advertising revenue, initially based on the ads that appear in responses to their posts.

In October 2022, after Musk reluctantly closed a debt-laden $44 billion deal for Twitter, he fired Twitter’s senior management team – and installed himself as CEO.

Musk then led mass layoffs at Twitter, cutting an estimated 80% of the company’s workforce.

Earlier this year, Elon Musk hired former NBCUniversal sales chief Linda Yaccarino as CEO. Since joining the company in June, he has hired a series of new sales executives. But ultimately, Musk will continue to run X/Twitter (he renamed the company after his favourite letter in July, for example). He has said he will continue to lead the company’s product and technology teams.

Source: CBS News