Online service Twitter began rolling out its controversial new paid subscription over the weekend. “Starting today, there are great new features in Twitter Blue,” said an update that was initially offered only for iPhones. Accordingly, a monthly subscription to the paid offer will cost $7.99 (around eight euros) a month in the future, instead of $4.99 as before. The update was ordered by new Twitter owner Elon Musk following his takeover.
The new subscription should be a prerequisite for Twitter customers to verify their user accounts with the blue tick in the future. So far, user accounts from politicians, celebrities, journalists and organizations, for example, have been verified and marked with a blue tick in the standard offer without asking for money.
Musk fires 7,500 Twitter employees via email
Twitter’s Director of Product Development, Esther Crawford, explained that while the new Blue version isn’t live yet, updates are already beginning.
Musk made transforming Twitter Blue a priority. According to reports, employees worked day and night on the task in order to be able to meet the start date of November 7th.
On Friday, multi-billionaire Musk fired around half of his 7,500 employees by email. Musk had already fired Twitter management immediately after the takeover. Musk took over Twitter last Thursday for $44 billion.
Sales are declining, Musk is threatening his advertisers
Musk also laments a slump in sales after major companies paused advertising on the online service. Musk blamed “activist groups” who put pressure on advertisers. The advertisers, who are now holding back and waiting for further developments, Musk is now blatantly threatening to publicly “shame” her.
On Friday, the VW group joined other large companies that are suspending their advertising on Twitter. General Motors stopped advertising on the platform last week. The pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the food giants Mondelez and General Mills are said to have taken similar steps.
Large advertising groups are also keeping their distance
Possibly even more threatening for Twitter’s advertising business, which accounts for around 90 percent of sales: the large international advertising groups are also keeping their distance. The industry giant IPG, which manages billions in advertising budgets for companies such as Coca-Cola, American Express, Levi Strauss and Spotify, is said to have advised customers to stop advertising on Twitter just a few days after Musk’s takeover.
A permanent withdrawal of major advertisers would be a problem for Twitter and Musk. The service recently wrote red numbers. Musk had also taken out loans of around $13 billion for the takeover – and according to media reports, servicing them requires more money than the Twitter business generates in free funds. Shrinking revenues would be particularly inconvenient.
Musk raised concerns himself with constant criticism that Twitter restricts freedom of speech too much. In an open letter to advertisers last week, he promised that not everyone would be allowed to express everything on Twitter without consequences. Then, over the weekend, he himself posted a link to an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
According to two insiders, Musk has demanded on the internal Slack channel to save more than $1 billion in infrastructure costs – such as for servers and cloud services – between $1.5 and $3 million per day. His message was captioned “Deep Cuts Plan.” Employees now fear that the Twitter network could collapse if there is a lot of data traffic – for example for the congressional elections on Tuesday.