Elon Musk wants Twitter to turn a profit, but his plan to charge users $7.99 per month for a blue checkmark has already seen a lot of public backlash.
Still, the overall picture seems clear: Musk is depending on a large number of people to purchase subscriptions, possibly well into the millions.At the end of October, Musk ally and reported new Twitter advisorposted a Twitter poll asking how much money, if any, users would be willing to pay"to be verified and get a blue checkmark on Twitter."
Of the roughly 2 million users who responded, 18.5% said they'd pay at least some amount for a subscription.But the poll isn't necessarily representative of all Twitter users. Daniel Ives, a senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, forecasts a best-case scenario of 10% signing up for a subscription service., the company said it had 237.8 million monetizable, daily active users. But it only happens if everything breaks in Musk's favor, Ives says.
The subscription plan is"an absolute disaster," he tells CNBC Make It."When 240 million users have essentially gotten Twitter for free, this is like all of a sudden charging $3 for bread at restaurants that you've gotten for free for the last 10 years." Musk's changes — to the company's workforce and the experience of using Twitter itself — also run the risk of driving away users and business partners.
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