Twitter will charge US$8 a month for its Blue service, which may include its sought-after "verified" badge, new boss Elon Musk said on Tuesday as he seeks to boost subscriptions and make the social media network less reliant on ads.
"Twitter's current lords & peasants system for who has or doesn't have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for $8/month," Musk , adding that the price will be adjusted by "country proportionate to purchasing power parity."
A blue check mark next to a person's user name on the social media platform means Twitter has confirmed that the account belongs to the person or company claiming it. Twitter is currently free for most users.
Billionaire Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last week.
Since the takeover, he has moved quickly to put his stamp on the company, firing its previous chief and other top officials.
Twitter's advertising chief, Sarah Personette, that she had resigned her post last week, adding further uncertainty for advertisers.
Musk on Tuesday said subscribers to Blue would get priority in replies, mentions and search and would be able to post longer videos and audios. They would see half as many ads.
He also offered subscribers a pay wall bypass from "publishers willing to work with us."
Musk's comments follow media reports that he was looking at the process of profile verification and how the blue check marks were given. Twitter used to give these to noteworthy profiles based on its own criteria.
More than 80% of Twitter users who took part in a recent poll said they would not pay for the checkmark. Some 10% said they were willing to pay $5 a month.
Twitter already has a subscription service called Twitter Blue, which was launched in June last year and offers access to features such as an option to edit tweets.
Amid speculation that Twitter may soon start charging verified users a monthly fee of $20 for blue ticks, bestselling author : "If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron."
Separately, S&P Global Ratings downgraded Twitter to B- on "significant" debt increase following the acquisition.
(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in San Francisco editing by Anil D'Silva and Matthew Lewis)
Procurement Minister and newly appointed Quebec lieutenant Jean-Yves Duclos is warning the NDP that the dental care program it helped put into place will be in jeopardy if it pulls its support from the governing Liberals.
At least two students at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania have been suspended from the swim team after a report that a racial slur was scratched onto a student's body, officials said.
The City of Calgary ended water restrictions for the city at a Sunday morning update.
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Kate, the Princess of Wales, made her first public appearance Sunday since she announced she had completed chemotherapy and would return to some public duties.
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Infectious disease physician Dr. Isaac Bogoch says whooping cough is most risky for unvaccinated infants, children and older people.
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An explosion in a coal mine in eastern Iran killed at least 33 workers and injured 17 others, officials said Sunday, marking one of the worst mining disasters in the country's history as others remained missing hours after the blast.
More than a year after the Titan submersible imploded, killing all five voyagers on board, the story of the ill-fated expedition to the Titanic has taken the form of a modern-day Greek tragedy overflowing with mortal pride and heedlessness.
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At least two students at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania have been suspended from the swim team after a report that a racial slur was scratched onto a student's body, officials said.
A two-storey building collapsed in the southern Italian province of Naples early Sunday, killing two young siblings and their grandmother, while burying the children's mother under the rubble, firefighters and local media said.
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The owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant said Friday that it plans to restart the reactor under a 20-year agreement that calls for tech giant Microsoft to buy the power to supply its data centers with carbon-free energy.
Lebanese authorities on Thursday banned walkie-talkies and pagers from being taken on flights from Beirut airport, the National News Agency reported, after thousands of such devices exploded during a deadly attack on Hezbollah this week.
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'Saturday Night Live' will have a slew of famous faces to help kick off its historic 50th season when the show returns later this month.
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The maker of the popular party game Cards Against Humanity is accusing Elon Musk's SpaceX of trespassing on and damaging a plot of vacant land the company owns in Texas.
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