By Barrabi
X owner Elon Musk revealed plans for two new paid subscription plans for users – even as his embattled social media site reportedly contends with a significant decline in web traffic.
Musk, who has led a controversial overhaul at the company formerly known as Twitter since buying it for $44 billion last fall, said Friday that there are “two new tiers of X Premium subscriptions launching soon.”
“One is lower cost with all features, but no reduction in ads, and the other is more expensive, but has no ads,” Musk wrote on X.
Musk didn’t provide any additional specifics about the plans or their expected prices. The new money grab comes a day after X said it has begun charging new users $1 per year in New Zealand and The Philippines to unlock basic features such as posting and interacting with other users.
Musk described the annual fee as the “only way to fight bots without blocking real users.” It’s unclear if the $1-per-year plan is one of the two that Musk mentioned.
Under the billionaire’s leadership, X has loosened content moderation standards, implemented a head-scratching rebrand that included ditching Twitter’s iconic “blue bird” logo and removed headlines and text from news article posts.
It has also shifted toward a subscription model as corporate advertisers fled the platform in droves in response to Musk’s changes.
At present, X has one subscription tier. Users can pay $8 per month in exchange for premium features such as “blue checkmark” account verification, the ability to edit their posts and the ability to post longer tweets and videos.
Users also appear to be skeptical of Musk’s approach. Global web traffic to Twitter.com plunged 14% in September compared to the same month one year ago, according to a report released this week by data analytics firm SimilarWeb. Additionally, traffic to X’s advertising platform, ads.twitter.com, was down 16.5%.
By comparison, traffic to the top 100 social media networks and communities fell 3.7% year-over-over in September. TikTok, one of X’s main competitors, saw a 22.8% surge in global web traffic.
Meanwhile, traffic to Musk’s personal account page has skyrocketed by 96% year-over-year. The billionaire uses the page to interact with users, share important updates for his various companies and weigh in on topics ranging from geopolitics to his favorite memes.
TNH has reached out to X for further comment.
Despite signs of falling traffic, Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino have claimed in recent months that usage is at record levels.
“Our usage is at an all-time high and we’ll continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” Yaccarino said in a memo to staffers in July.
