Twitter to launch ad-free subscription tier, Elon Musk says - The Guardian

Twitter is readying an advertising-free mentation of its subscription product, arsenic the institution attempts to rise gross and summation request for its premium offering.

Elon Musk has targeted an summation successful subscription gross arsenic a cardinal portion of the societal media platform’s concern program nether his ownership.

The Tesla main enforcement tweeted: “There volition beryllium a higher priced subscription that allows zero ads.” Twitter relaunched its premium offering for the 2nd clip nether Musk successful December, offering users perks including verified relationship presumption for $8 (£6.50) a period connected the web oregon $11 a period for iPhone and Android telephone users.

Advertising accounted for 90% of Twitter’s gross successful 2021 but has fallen distant since Musk bought the concern past October, with regular gross reportedly dropping 40% compared with past year.

Advertisers including the carmaker Audi and the drugs steadfast Pfizer person paused spending connected Twitter amid fears of a emergence successful hatred code connected the platform, compounded by a botched revamp of Twitter Blue successful November that led to pranksters paying for verified presumption successful bid to launch fake firm accounts.

Tweeting connected Saturday, Musk added that, contempt the advertizing downturn, ads were excessively predominant connected the level and “too big”. He added: “Taking steps to code some successful coming weeks.”

Musk aims to trim Twitter’s dependency connected advertizing arsenic outgo looms for an involvement outgo connected the $13bn of indebtedness helium loaded connected the institution arsenic portion of the takeover. According to reports, Twitter is owed to marque a quarterly outgo of $300m this month, perchance arsenic soon arsenic this week.

Musk told unit successful November that Twitter mightiness not past a forthcoming downturn without a important summation successful subscription income. “Without important subscription revenue, determination is simply a bully accidental Twitter volition not past the upcoming economical downturn. We request astir fractional of our gross to beryllium subscription,” helium wrote successful a company-wide email.

Twitter Blue is disposable successful the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Musk has likened Twitter to a “plane that is headed towards the crushed astatine precocious velocity with the engines connected occurrence and the controls don’t work” and has flagged the imaginable of bankruptcy for a concern that he bought for $44bn. However, past period Musk has down the imaginable of the institution going bust, saying it was “not connected the accelerated lane to bankruptcy immoderate more”.