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Taking to his newly-acquired social media service on Tuesday afternoon, Elon Musk attempted to explain the rationale behind charging verified users for their “blue checks.” While initial reports indicated Musk would begin charging $20 per month, his tweet now indicates it will be $8 per month.
According to Musk, he believes that Twitter’s current “s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bulls**t.” However, Musk clearly doesn’t dislike the blue check system enough to get rid of his, as he’s instead deciding to monetize it.
Elon Musk has explained why Twitter is going to begin charging verified users for their blue checks, drops the reported price from $20 per month to $8 per month
Twitter’s current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.
Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
Additionally, Musk said that the price will be adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity and that there will be a paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us.
Musk also listed out the features that will come with Twitter Blue (which is currently $5 per month), such as priority in replies, mentions, and search — which he says is “essential to defeat spam/scam”, the ability to post long video and audio (which is a feature that Blue already has), and “half as many ads” on your feed.
The announcement from Musk comes following a public conversation with Stephen King (well, Musk replied to King’s tweets) on the service, who bemoaned the fact that he was being charged for verification and instead proclaimed that Twitter should be paying him. King’s post went viral (with over 400,000 likes) and Musk responded by saying that he’d drop the fee to $8 because Twitter needs to “pay the bills,” and that he’d explain why in further detail.
According to Twitter’s official “Verified” account, which follows every account that has been given the blue checkmark, there are about 425,000 verified users (currently) on Twitter, which means the social media service stands to make approximately $3.4 million per month and about $40 million per year.
In addition to reports of the new method of revenue, reports from The Verge indicate that Musk told the team launching the feature that it must be completed by November 7 or they’ll be fired.