It’s official- Elon Musk has bought the social media platform Twitter. He’s wasted no time implementing changes. One update includes an $8 charge to users for verification. The reasoning? Musk says this will help identify bots on the platform because all humans will theoretically be verified. That’s not the only money-making idea he has. After all, he paid $44 billion for the investment into Twitter.
Other changes you can expect to roll out include…
Pay to Play Long-Form Video
It’s speculated that Twitter will soon enable creators to charge a fee for watching their long-form video content.
“According to an internal email describing the new video feature, which has not yet been announced, “When a creator composes a tweet with a video, the creator can then enable the paywall once the video has been added to the tweet.” They can then choose from a preset list of prices, such as $1, $2, $5 or $20.”
Charging Money to Send DMs
According to Twitter Researcher Danny Singh, creators may soon be able to receive payment from interested fans or customers who want to send them a DM.
The Twitter forum asks users to provide feedback and there are very good points both for and against the feature. One user requested that the feature come with a return ability to avoid people looking to “pay to harass”. Someone else referenced the failure of LinkedIn’s InMail to do essentially what Twitter is proposing. What is clear is that there’s still much work to be done on this idea.
A question on everyone’s mind in wake of the Musk takeover- will banned users be able to return to the platform? In the past, Musk has shared his opinion on Twitter’s banning of the former President, and many believe that Musk will allow Trump to return.
His response?:
Presumably Musk is referring to his Content Moderation Council which he says “will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence”.
What’s in Twitter’s future? Only Elon Musk knows.
