Some of the first steps Elon Musk took after buying Twitter for $44 billion were to find ways to monetize the service.
One of them is the plan of massive layoffs to save expenses, implementing paid subscribers of USD 8 per month, and a number of other features such as paywalls for videos and paid direct message issues.
This kind of move makes Musk look very desperate to boost Twitter revenue. Whereas before the acquisition was made, Musk often stated that the acquisition was not done to make money.
"This is not the way to make money. Having a platform that is maximally trusted and widely inclusive is very important for future civilization. It's not about economics at all," he said in a TED interview in April.
But his enthusiasm for buying Twitter plummeted when he saw Twitter's financial book. In fact, he even wanted to cancel the acquisition, to the point that the matter was brought to the Green Table.
It seems that Musk is really surprised to see Twitter's financial condition, which in the previous quarter recorded a loss of USD 344 million. With the number of users not increasing, investors will certainly become pessimistic about Twitter's financial condition in the future.
Now with Musk's acquisition, Twitter's debt has grown by billions of dollars, which makes matters even more complicated. Because Musk borrowed $13 billion to finance the acquisition.
As a result, the installments that Twitter has to pay annually reach USD 1 billion, far more than Twitter's total profit during 2021. Then the issue of Twitter's advertising business, which is actually their main income, has been shaky since Musk planned to acquire Twitter in April.
The amount of revenue from advertising has decreased overall, and now many advertisers are temporarily stopping their advertising on Twitter because of Musk's various actions that are considered dangerous.
So it's only natural that Musk then looks for all the loopholes on Twitter that can be used to make money. Including looking for income other than advertising, such as creating paid customer schemes, and so on.
But even if all verified accounts on Twitter -- about 400,000 accounts -- were willing to pay $8 per month to stay verified, it would only generate $38 million in revenue per year, still a far cry from the $1 billion installment Twitter has to pay.
