The world of X, formerly known as Twitter, has changed since Elon Musk acquired the company for $44 billion.
Among the changes was a push for more monetization with premium subscriptions for users and an end to the legacy blue checkmarks that were provided for certain accounts.
A new poll reveals that a low percentage of people are paying for the subscription plans.
What Happened: Along with renaming Twitter to X, Musk worked on adding several subscription tiers to users on the social media platform.
This includes the Basic tier, which costs $3 monthly (or $2.67 monthly if paid for annually), which includes features like a reply boost, encrypted DMs, the ability to edit tweets, and the ability to make longer posts.
The Premium tier comes with an $8 monthly cost (or $7 monthly if paid annually). The plan offers a verified checkmark, early access to Grok and analytics. The biggest feature of the Premium tier is likely the ability for monetization with Musk paying out a portion of ad revenue to verified users who meet certain milestone metrics.
The Premium+ plan costs $16 per month (or $14 monthly if paid annually). The plan includes all features the from Basic and Premium, plus an ad-free experience, the largest reply boost on posts, and the capability to write full articles on the platform.
Benzinga recently polled its X followers to see who was subscribing to the plans.
"Which X tier are you subscribed to," Benzinga asked.
Here are the results:
- None: 66.8%
- Basic: 22%
- Premium: 7.3%
- Premium+: 3.9%
The poll showed that 67% of the 232 respondents are not currently paying extra for the premium features on X. Of the 33% that are paying, 22% said they were paying the $3 monthly for the Basic plan. A total of 11.2% said they were subscribing to the higher cost Premium and Premium+ plans.
Related Link: Musk’s xAI Releases Its AI Model Grok To The Open Source Community, But With A Small Tweak
Why It's Important: While the Benzinga poll represented a small sample size of the hundreds of millions of X users, it showed that a large percentage are using the free features and not paying for premium features.
Since acquiring Twitter, Musk has tried to put less emphasis on advertising revenue by adding more subscription-based models.
In March 2024, Musk replied to a user about subscriptions being a way to keep free speech alive on X.
"Subscribing is the only way to ensure that major brand advertisers cannot demand censorship of this platform," Musk said.
In the ongoing balance of advertising and subscription revenue, X may need to lower prices or add more features to get a higher percentage of users subscribing to premium models.
Follow Benzinga on X for more polls.
Photo: Shutterstock
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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