TheQuartering [119/2022]
Elon Musk’s plans to charge a monthly fee of $8 for Twitter users to verify their accounts has been met with widespread resistance—but his plans to monetize the platform could go even further.
According to Platformer, a newsletter covering Big Tech, Musk and his top advisers have discussed charging all Twitter’s users a blanket subscription fee to use the social media site.
Citing a source familiar with matters discussed in high-level meetings at the company, Platformer reported that one plan that was being floated could allow everyone to use Twitter for a limited amount of time every month, after which a paid subscription would be required to keep browsing.
Platformer said the potential plans did not appear to be imminent, as Twitter teams were busy expanding the site’s account verification system—a controversial move that has been criticized by a number of users including Stephen King, Mark Ruffalo, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Representatives for Twitter did not respond to Fortune’s request to comment on the paywall reports.
Weighing in on Musk’s idea for a Twitter paywall, experts speculated that a shift to this kind of business model could damage the social media site’s offering to its users.
Paul Sutton, a social media consultant who has worked with massive brands including L’Oréal and Honda, told Fortune that he believed putting Twitter behind a paywall “would effectively sound the death knell for the platform.”
Noting that the majority of Twitter’s income is derived from advertising, Sutton said the question was really whether enough users would pay to use the platform to counter-balance what would be “an inevitable fall in that advertising revenue.”
“The answer to that, to me, is no,” he said. “Twitter has been an amazing network for many over the years, and historic users do still love it for the connections it can forge. But is it so valuable that those connections can’t be created elsewhere? No. Users will find somewhere else.”
Andrew Chadwick, a professor of political communication at Loughborough University, told Fortune in a call on Tuesday that Musk’s reported paywall plans “could end up undermining Twitter as a platform.”
