Twitter to charge fee for commercial and government users

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said that Twitter will always be free for casual users but may charge a slight fee for commercial and government users, to boost the social media platform’s reach from niche to most Americans.

Recently at the annual Met Gala in New York, Musk also said he would make Twitter transparent about how tweets are promoted or demoted and wanted its software to be publicly available for criticism.

Musk tweeted, “Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users. Some revenue is better than none!” Twitter has 229 million daily users worldwide.

The Tesla Chief Executive has agreed to buy Twitter for $44bn, in a deal funded by $21 billion of his own money, a further $12.5 billion borrowed against his shareholding in Tesla and the rest made up by loans from banks.

Last week Musk had told banks he would develop new ways to monetise tweets and crack down on executive pay to slash costs at the social media platform. Musk also told the banks he planned to develop features to grow business revenue, including new ways to make money out of tweets that contain important information or go viral.