Elon Musk has stated that government and business Twitter accounts may face a “slight cost” to use the platform.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted the news to his 90 million followers, but insisted that “Twitter will always be free for casual users”.
“Ultimately, the downfall of the Freemasons was giving away their stonecutting services for nothing,” Musk tweeted as he announced the plans, before suggesting he could levy a fee on business and government users of Twitter in the future:
Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 3, 2022
Last Monday, the board of directors of Twitter agreed to sell the social media platform to Musk, who will pay $44 billion for it. Musk has been eyeing Twitter for some time, having purchased a 9% stake in the firm earlier this year, and he intends to take it privately once he has control, allowing him to make changes to the site.
Musk’s takeover is expected to be completed later this year. The business magnate has also expressed plans to rid the site of spambots and “authenticate all humans”, meaning anonymous accounts could become a thing of the past.
He has also voiced his support for the ability to edit tweets that have already been posted, a tool that Twitter had previously confirmed was in development following demand from users.
Twitter is now free for all users, however, it does allow businesses to advertise and promote their tweets in order to reach a larger audience. However, despite sales rising substantially from $3.7 billion in 2020 to $5.08 billion in 2021, these services could not assist the company turns a profit, and it reported a $493 million loss for the fiscal year 2021.
Musk is looking for new income streams for the platform, having described it as a “niche” platform and stated he wants to increase its attractiveness to users.
Indeed, Twitter says it currently has 330 million monthly active users, far below the 2.9 billion users accessing Facebook each month.
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