Elon Musk announces an increase in the cost of subscribing to Twitter's ad-free service

Web subscriptions are also available for $8 per month or $84 per year at a discount. (file)

Washington:

Twitter chief Elon Musk announced in a series of tweets Saturday that the company’s subscription service will show users fewer ads, including an ad-free tier.

The announcement comes as the social network has faced significant economic uncertainty since Musk’s acquisition in October.

“Ads are very frequent on Twitter and very large. Taking steps to address both in the coming weeks,” Musk wrote on his Twitter account on Saturday.

For those who choose it, Musk added, “there will be a higher-priced subscription that does not allow any ads.”

This would be a drastic change in the business model of Twitter, which until now relied on targeted advertising to generate revenue, ahead of the launch of its paid subscription service in mid-December.

But the ads have been a question mark for Twitter lately, after Musk fired about half of the company’s 7,500-strong workforce late last year. The move raised concerns that the company did not have enough staff to undertake content moderation and intimidate governments and advertisers.

Musk said his strategy is to cut costs significantly while increasing revenue, and that a new subscription service called Twitter Blue, which gives users a required blue check mark for a fee, will help reach that goal.

The service costs $11 per month in the US and is available on iOS and Android, according to a page on the company’s website.

Web subscriptions are also available for $8 per month or $84 per year at a discount.

Twitter Blue is currently available in the US, Canada, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

Musk’s Twitter was in shambles, with mass layoffs, the return of banned accounts, and the suspension of journalists critical of the South African-born billionaire.

Musk’s acquisition also saw a rise in racist or hateful tweets, drawing scrutiny from regulators and firing big advertisers, Twitter’s main source of revenue.

(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by the NDTV staff and was published from a syndicated feed.)