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Elon Musk has resorted to crowdsourcing ideas to make Twitter more profitable as annual billion-dollar debt payments loom

Samantha Delouya   

Elon Musk has resorted to crowdsourcing ideas to make Twitter more profitable as annual billion-dollar debt payments loom
  • Elon Musk appears to be crowdsourcing business ideas for Twitter from users on the platform.
  • Musk is trying to make Twitter profitable as the company also faces billions in interest on Musk's deal debt.

Want to know what's going on at Twitter under Elon Musk's leadership? Check his Twitter account.

While the details of how Musk plans to make Twitter a more profitable company have been largely shrouded in mystery, he appears to be crowdsourcing business and management ideas from Twitter's own users.

One thing is clear: Musk is looking for a way to make Twitter some money — quickly. What is less clear is whether he had any defined plans to monetize the platform before he closed his $44 billion acquisition.

The most notable recent example of Musk's public opinion-driven decision-making was the selection of $8 as the price point for Twitter's revamped Twitter Blue offering, which will include a blue check mark for any user who pays monthly.

Musk initially wanted to charge $20 per month, according to a report by The Verge, but he seemed to switch gears when users — including the famous author Stephen King — balked at the price tag.

"$20 a month to keep my blue check? F--k that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron," King tweeted.

Musk seemed to try to negotiate with King, replying to his tweet by saying, "we need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?"

This conversation is similar to many that Musk has had on Twitter recently, seemingly hashing out ideas for Twitter's future on the platform itself.

Earlier this year, Musk promised investors he would grow Twitter's revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, according to the New York Times. He has a long way to go, considering Twitter lost $270 million in its most recent second quarter. On top of that, Twitter will now owe roughly $1 billion per year in interest payments due in part to the $13 billion in money Musk borrowed from banks to close the deal to buy the platform.

Some Twitter users' ideas might potentially make Twitter some money in the near term, though.

One user suggested tracking analytics for specific hashtags and charging for the data ("sounds like a good idea," Musk said). Another offered the idea to revive Vine, the short-form video site Twitter shut down in 2017, to compete with TikTok ("what could we do to make it better than TikTok?" Musk asked his followers).

Musk hasn't only focused on revenue-generating suggestions, though.

Users have suggested features they said would improve the platform's experience, like purging inactive accounts to free up Twitter handles ("Definitely," Musk replied) and increasing the allowable length of videos posted on the site (to that, Musk responded with the "100%" emoji).



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