- Elon Musk takes to Twitter to randomly suggest ways to “pay the bills” as interest payments are due soon.
- His approach is completely different from when he said he “don’t care” about the economics of the April purchase.
- Musk has reportedly suggested paid direct messages and “paywall” videos to consultants to make more money for Twitter.
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Shortly after Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April, he said he “didn’t care at all” about the economics of the purchase.
“This is just my strong, intuitive feeling that having a public platform that is maximally trustworthy and inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” Musk said at the TED2022 conference.
Seven months later, the richest man in the world seems to have changed his mind and is randomly proposing ideas to his advisors and even his Twitter followers to make the platform profitable.
Earlier this week, Musk announced that Twitter would begin charging $8 per month for its “Blue Check” verification program, which was previously free for those who qualified.
“We’ve got to pay the bills somehow!” Musk wrote in a tweet Responding to complaints about the fee.
But that’s not the only idea Musk has in mind to squeeze money out of his new venture. The New York Times reports that Musk and his advisors were considering adding a service that would allow users to send direct messages to high-profile users and “paywall” videos for a fee.
According to his interactions with followers on Twitter, Musk has also considered charging for user analytics and revitalizing short-form video platform Vine.
The rushed attempts to generate new revenue streams on Twitter stand at odds with how Musk talked about buying the social media platform last spring, when he hailed the platform as a “de facto town square” and the deal with Twitter Jeff Bezos likened ‘buying the Washington Post’.
Now Musk has Twitter staff on duty 24/7 trying to figure out a way to get money off the platform as Twitter will eventually expect massive interest payments. Musk borrowed $13 billion from banks to partially fund the deal, and the company has to pay $1 billion in annual interest as a result. Twitter’s total cash flow last year was less than $1 billion, according to the Times.
Charging for previously free services isn’t the only way Musk has tried to save the company money. By Thursday evening and Friday morning, large swathes of Twitter employees learned they had been fired, either via email or simply because they had lost access to their Slack and email accounts.