The new owner of Twitter, controversial billionaire Elon Musk, has assigned himself the “sole director” of Twitter, dissolving the existing board of directors. The news broke following the release of new documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stating “Mr. Musk became the sole director of Twitter.”
Musk clearly wishes to make big on his dreams for the social media site, after a failed attempt to back out of the deal. In the past, Musk has expressed concern that Twitter has never been able to effectively monetize itself and its creators. Twitter is speculated to have not been very profitable, with the site lacking the aggressive monetization and advertising used by other sites.
As part of plans to increase profits, Twitter is soon expected to charge $20 to verify users under a revamped Twitter Blue subscription model. The reports come from The Verge, claiming to have people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence to corroborate their statements. Musk already stated just yesterday in a Tweet that “the whole verification process is being revamped right now.”
Although Twitter communities have felt the need for some kind of monetization system to support large content creators, there has already been huge backlash towards the $20 tag of such a subscription. Verification is argued by many to be an essential for the social media platform, which prevents fake accounts impersonating public figures and boosts the legitimacy of certain Twitter users. It’s unclear at present whether the subscription verification fee would be a distinguished from the existing verification in some way, to mark it as a purchased icon.
The monetization of Twitter is hard – if it was easy, it would already have been done. Musk has a lot of confidence that he can bring the change needed to Twitter to make it profitable, and he’s highly incentivised to do so given the $44 billion price tag.
How would you monetize Twitter? Let us know in the comments below, and keep your eyes on TeqLuster for the latest tech news.
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