Elon Musk today announced Twitter users will need to pay £7 per month for a verified tick, after being talked down from £17 by famous author Stephen King.
The Tesla founder’s chaotic takeover of Twitter continues as Mr Musk has now backtracked on one of his first announcements and altered the price.
Originally it was reported that verified Twitter users, who carry a white tick in a blue circle to show their status, would have to cough up £17 a month to maintain their status.
But the new Twitter owner, who paid up to $44billion for the social media site, backtracked on the original higher priced plan.
Horror legend King tweeted: “$20 a month to keep my blue check? F*** that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.”
In response, the new Twitter boss waded into the replies and offered: “We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?"
The original reports on the sudden payment led to outcry and a number of questions being raised to the practicality of the policy.
For example, what would governments and similar organisations do who need to prove the legitimacy of their account.
Under Mr Musk’s new plans, a reporter for The Financial Times pointed out that The Department for Work and Pensions has 58 verified Twitter accounts meaning one of the smaller government departments would need to cough up around £12,000 a year.
Mr Musk continued: “I will explain the rationale in longer form before this is implemented. It is the only way to defeat the bots & trolls.”
He also claimed the price would be “adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity”.
The issue of making money from Twitter has loomed over the company for a number of years.
Other social media sites owned by Meta have followed Mark Zuckerberg’s plan of introducing a transactional aspect to his sites that have amassed hundreds of millions if not billions of people.
So on Facebook and Instagram, marketplaces became a key feature in an attempt to profit.
Meanwhile Twitter turned to flogging ad space on the platform to make the majority of its revenue, but it’s still thought to not be enough.
This has left Mr Musk in his current position where he has been trying to come up with new ways to make money off the platform.
Mr Musk outlined further ideas for his newfound social media site amongst worries the likes of Donald Trump and Kanye West might be readmitted.
Alongside the white tick, Mr Musk said paying users would get priority in replies, mentions and searches; half as many ads and paywall bypasses for “publishers willing to work with us”.
Mr Musk claimed it was a vital tool to “defeat spam/scam”.
Allaying fears the world’s politicians would be unverified overnight, he added: “There will be a secondary tag below the name for someone who is a public figure, which is already the case for politicians”.
