Elon Musk, Twitter Inc’s largest shareholder since final week, on Saturday steered a raft of adjustments to the social media large’s Twitter Blue premium subscription service, together with slashing its worth, banning promoting and giving an choice to pay within the cryptocurrency dogecoin.
Musk, who final week disclosed a 9.2% stake in Twitter, was supplied a seat on its board of administrators, a transfer which made some Twitter staff panic over the way forward for its capability to reasonable content material.
Twitter Blue, launched in June final yr, is Twitter’s first subscription service and presents unique entry to premium options on a month-to-month subscription foundation, Twitter says. It’s out there within the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The daddy of Tesla tweeted that customers who signed up for Twitter Blue ought to pay considerably lower than the present $2.99 (R43.38) a month, and may get an authentication checkmark in addition to an choice to pay in native foreign money. “And no adverts,” he steered. “The facility of companies to dictate coverage is vastly enhanced if Twitter will depend on promoting cash to outlive.”
Musk additionally proposed an choice to pay with dogecoin and requested Twitter customers for his or her views.
Twitter declined to touch upon Musk’s strategies.
The corporate already lets individuals tip their favorite content material creators utilizing bitcoin.
Twitter stated final yr that it deliberate to help authentication for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, that are digital property similar to pictures or movies that exist on a blockchain.
Musk additionally began a ballot on his Twitter account — which has greater than 81-million followers — asking whether or not the agency’s San Francisco headquarters needs to be transformed to a homeless shelter as “no-one reveals up [to work there]”.
The ballot obtained extra 300,000 votes in an hour, with 90% answering sure.