Full time Twitter CEO and part time Tesla enthusiast Elon Musk said On Saturday, users of his social media platform will be able to avoid media subscriptions and pay per article starting “next month”. Musk says Twitter’s upcoming “One Click” service “should be a huge win for both media organizations and the public” by allowing media companies to charge a higher price per article to readers who wouldn’t necessarily pay the full subscription price.
Musk didn’t say what percentage Twitter would get for itself or what terms media publishers would need to meet.
As with all of Musk’s timelines, it’s best to take the “next month” estimate as the absolute best case scenario for the arrival of Twitter’s microtransaction service. But I don’t doubt Musk’s urgency. Twitter is vying for revenue even as it alienates longtime users and antagonizes media organizations — both of which are actively testing the waters elsewhere. The latest Twitter du jour is Bluesky, which recently added Twitter property Darth, Dril, and AOC to its ranks.
Musk is desperate to add new eyeballs and other sources of revenue to pay down debt, with the company valued at less than half of what he paid for it. Twitter Blue subscriptions aren’t doing well enough to offset the loss of advertisers who have reportedly fled the platform since Musk’s acquisition. The company also introduced a new fee structure for API access that could cost some organizations up to $42,000 per month for what was previously free.