Elon Musk has said Twitter will offer a premium subscription service for $8 a month that will verify users, boost the visibility of their posts and allow them to see fewer advertisements, in his first step towards overhauling the product since he took the reins at the company last week.
Before Musk’s $44bn acquisition of the social media group, which closed last week, users could pay $4.99 a month to subscribe to Twitter Blue, giving them access to exclusive features including an edit button.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday said in a Twitter thread that he now wanted to offer “Blue for $8/month”. This would give subscribers “priority in replies, mentions & search”, which he said was “essential to defeat spam/scam”. It would also give users the ability to post longer video and audio clips, and view “half as many ads”, he said.