The owner of X, Elon Musk, has said that the platform will be coming with two new tiers of subscriptions, one at a lower cost than the current $8 a month X Premium and another ‘more expensive.’
According to Musk, the more expensive subscription will be free of ads, while the lower-cost subscription will see no reduction in the ads they see.
- “Two new tiers of X Premium subscriptions are 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 posted on Friday.
This is no doubt part of the aggressive moves by the billionaire to ensure that the company he acquired at $44 billion becomes profitable by next year.
X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino recently disclosed that the company is working towards becoming profitable by early 2024. The company earlier this week introduced a $1 fee for new users on the platform, which it is piloting in New Zealand and the Philippines.
However, X noted that the new fee was not to drive profit but a solution to reduce bots on the platform.
X traffic stats
Meanwhile, different stats indicate that traffic on X has not been looking good since Elon Musk took over last October.
The stats do not align with the billionaire’s claim that more people are getting on X and are “creating 100 to 200 million posts every day excluding reposts.”
According to a recent report, X’s daily active users have dropped 3.7% to 245 million since Elon Musk bought the company last year, according to a comparison of new metrics released by the company and metrics Musk posted earlier.
Another report by Similarweb, a web ranking platform, also showed that traffic on X, formerly Twitter, has declined by 14% year-on-year in September 2023, marking one year of Elon Musk’s ownership of the company.
Similarweb said traffic had only increased on Musk’s X profile as it was up 96% year-over-year in September. It added that in the US, where about a quarter of Twitter.com’s web traffic originates, September traffic was down 19%.
The trend was similar, if not quite as pronounced in other countries: -11.6% in the UK, -13.4% in France, -17.9% in Germany, and -17.5% in Australia.
The web ranking platform noted that Musk’s ongoing feud with the media could cause further deterioration in the utility of X as a news source.
It added that this has certainly reduced the significance of Twitter as a traffic source for publishers.
