TWTR - Twitter to end ad-free articles for subscribers - WSJ (updated)

Twitter ( NYSE: TWTR ) is cutting the ability of its paid subscribers to access ad-free articles from publishers, the WSJ reports - the latest sweeping move in the few days since Elon Musk closed his $44B acquisition of the company and became its CEO and sole director .

The focus in recent hours has turned to Twitter Blue, the company's $4.99/month subscription tier. It offers subscribers extra features, such as the ability to "undo" posts on the service, as well as ad-free articles from hundreds of publishers.

In the past couple of days, though, Musk has floated the idea of tying account verification to paid subscriptions, and raising that price to $19.99 per month. The new report suggests cutting a key perk from the program.

As famed horror author Stephen King complained on Twitter that he wouldn't pay $20 per month and would be "gone like Enron," Musk replied : "We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?"

Any pricing move from Twitter has implications for the relatively small group of power players in social media and how they monetize accounts.

Social-media standard Facebook ( NASDAQ: META ) is the sector's gorilla, lacking a monthly subscription cost and tapped by essentially 2B users each day. Over the years it's considered small toe-dips into subscriptions in areas such as groups , news and video on demand , though its flagship product is still free to join.

Meanwhile, Snap ( NYSE: SNAP ) has struggled with revenue streams over the past year and so has a high-stakes plan to add $350M in new revenue from its Snapchat+ product, which costs $3.99 per month .

Updated 2:09 p.m.: Musk has tweeted critically about the "lords & peasants" system for verified accounts, which get a blue checkmark on the platform, and says "Power to the people! Blue for $8/month."

Blue users will get "Priority in replies, mentions & search, which is essential to defeat spam/scam; Ability to post long video & audio; Half as many ads" and "paywall bypass for publishers willing to work with us." It's also giving Twitter "a revenue stream to reward content creators," he says.

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