As per the report, the paid messaging plans are focused on “Very Important Tweeters, or V.I.T.s” and will involve a message fee worth a few dollars for each message. It is unclear if a user will have to submit a fee in advance to send over messages to a celebrity, or whether they will be charged only when the receiver accepts the message request.
Of course, there’s a monetization side to it. Twitter will reportedly take a cut out of the fee users pay to chat with an influential personality, most likely rocking a verified badge. The model is not too different from Apple or Google, both of which charge up to a 30% cut to let app developers reach smartphone users via the App Store and Play Store, respectively.
However, the plans for a paid messaging system are elastic, and there’s a real possibility that it might never see the light of day. On the flip side, Musk has already shuttered, or put on cold ice, high-profile products like the Revue newsletter platform tied tightly to a writer’s Twitter account, and the Note feature for posting long-form articles on the platform.
