Elon Musk says Twitter may charge small fees for businesses and govts

Elon Musk said on Tuesday that Twitter Inc could charge a “light” fee for commercial and governmental users, part of the billionaire entrepreneur’s push to increase revenues that have dragged behind bigger rivals such as Meta Platforms Inc Facebook.

“Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users,” Musk said in a tweet.

Twitter did not comment when Reuters contacted it.

Last week, Reuters reported that Musk had told the banks that he would find new ways of monetizing tweets and cracking down on executive pay to lower the costs of the social media platform.

Musk also told the banks that he intended to develop functionalities to increase business revenues, including new ways to make money from tweets with important information or becoming viral, according to Reuters.

At the Met Gala in New York City on Monday, Musk said that the scope of Twitter was currently just “niche,” and he would like a much bigger percentage of the country to be on it.

In tweets that were removed afterward, Musk suggested changes to Twitter’s Blue premium subscription service, including lowering its price, banning advertising, and giving an option to pay into the Dogecoin cryptocurrency.

After signing the deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion last week, Musk said he wanted to upgrade the platform with new features, make open-source algorithms to boost trust, defeat spam bots, and authenticate all humans.