Twitter to start sharing advert revenue with content creators, Elon Musk says

Accounts must be subscribed to Twitter Blue Verified to receive income

Twitter reportedly lost at least half of its major advertisers in the weeks after Elon Musk became its chief executive. AP

Twitter will start sharing advertisement revenue with some content creators, the social media platform's billionaire owner and chief executive Elon Musk said on Friday.

“Starting today, Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads,” he tweeted.

Mr Musk, who has about 127.8 million followers himself, did not specify the actual share creators would receive.

To be eligible, the account must be a subscriber to Twitter Blue Verified, he said.

The blue check mark was previously reserved for the verified accounts of politicians, celebrities, journalists and other public figures.

However, Mr Musk launched the Twitter Blue subscription service to raise fresh revenue.

The subscription adds a blue check to an account and offers early access to features such as tweet edits, longer videos, NFT profile pictures and custom app icons.

Newly created Twitter accounts are not able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for 90 days.

The feature is currently available in 12 countries, including Saudi Arabia.

In the US, Twitter Blue costs $11 per month on Apple's iOS and Android, while it is slightly cheaper at $8 for the web version. In Saudi Arabia, it will cost 42 Saudi riyals ($11.2) per month.

Twitter lost at least half of its major advertisers in the weeks after Mr Musk became its chief executive, representing a loss of about $750 million, a report by non-profit Media Matters found.

Mr Musk had previously claimed that the company was losing $4 million a day. It has since introduced a paid subscription service and is moving forward with plans to introduce a payments feature on its platform to raise new revenue.

On Thursday, Twitter announced that it would end free API access and that a paid basic tier would be available instead.

More details will be released next week, it added.