Elon Musk may flip the switch to make X — the social network formerly known as Twitter — an entirely subscription-based platform. Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twi…

I’m not sure if this is technically Technology news, but I can remove this post if it’s in the wrong community

Archive link: http://archive.today/3XM6s

Musk brought up the idea of charging all users of X/Twitter during a wide-ranging conversation focused on AI that featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. “[We’re] moving to a small monthly payment for use of the X system,” Musk told Netanyahu, claiming that it is the only way to eliminate the problem of bots, as reported by Bloomberg’s Dave Lee.

Musk didn’t mention timing of his plan to charge X/Twitter users, nor did he say how much it would cost.

Musk, who also is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said X/Twitter ad sales have plunged 50% since he bought the company. “We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” Musk posted on July 15.

  • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Frankly I do not understand Twitter. Never been a member. Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.

    The people that seem to like it are those that want to be “the person” people follow or those that want to follow “the person”. Both are kind of offensive behaviors as far as I am concerned.

    • bermuda@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Have looked at linked content sometimes but it always looks like a bunch of short meaningless thoughtless content. So I think Twitter has 0 value.

      I mean, that was the original point of twitter. Jack Dorsey took Facebook’s status updates feature and made a whole website about it. You’d follow people you knew in real life as well as famous people you liked and then could see short updates about their life and their interests. Most of the very first tweets were just innocuous little updates. 50cent said he was in Turkey. Warren Buffet said he joined the app. A bunch of random non celebrities posted messages about what they were cooking that day.

      Twitter effectively ran this concept into the ground when it 1) removed the character limit (it was originally 140 chars), and 2) added thread reply features.

      • flatbield@beehaw.orgEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        The amazing thing to me is that people actually care about that. Obviously a lot of people do. I cannot fathom it. It is just not me. Kind of confirms I made a good choice by ignoring Twitter.