Musk says Twitter may charge small fees to commercial government users

May 3 (Reuters) – Elon Musk said on Twitter on Tuesday (TWTR.N) It may charge “slight” fees to commercial and government users, part of the billionaire’s drive to increase revenue that has lagged behind big competitors such as Meta Platforms Inc’s (FB.O) Facebook.

“Twitter will always be free for regular users, but perhaps at a slight cost for commercial/government users,” Musk said in a tweet. “Some revenue is better than none!” Added in another tweet.

Twitter declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

Last week, Reuters reported that Musk told banks he would develop new ways to monetize tweets and clamp down on executive pay to cut costs at the social media platform company. Read more

Sources told Reuters that Musk also told banks that he plans to develop features to increase business revenue, including new ways to make money from tweets that contain important information or go viral.

At the annual Met Gala in New York on Monday, Musk said just how pervasive Twitter is right now is “a proper place,” and he wants a much larger percentage of the country to be on it. Read more

Musk is also the CEO of Tesla Inc (TSLA.O)suggests a slew of changes to Twitter since last month.

In later deleted tweets, Musk suggested changes to Twitter Blue’s premium subscription service, including lowering its price, blocking ads, and giving the option to pay in dogecoin cryptocurrency.

After signing a $44 billion purchase of Twitter last week, Musk said he wants to improve the platform with new features, make algorithms open source to increase trust, defeat spam bots, and authenticate all humans. Read more

(Additional reporting by Shivani Tana, Maria Bonzath and Chobham Kalia in Bengaluru); Editing by Uttaresh.V and Subhranshu Sahu

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