Elon Musk thinks he can double Twitter’s revenue with subscriptions alone

Elon Musk – the world’s richest man and new owner of Twitter – expects Twitter to generate nearly $10 billion in revenue from subscriptions by 2028, a forecast that doubles $5 billion in total revenue The platform created last year, according to a report from New York times.

On the pitch he sees timesMusk gave investors a taste of what to expect under its ownership. This is said to include increasing the number of Twitter Blue subscribers to 69 million by 2025 and more than doubling that number to 159 million by 2028. Launched last year, Twitter Blue is a $2.99 ​​per month subscription to the service. which allows users to access the “Undo Tweet” buttonAnd app customization, ad-free articles and other exclusive features. Musk expects massive growth in total Twitter users as well, growing from 217 million users reported last year to 600 million Twitter users in 2025, and eventually 931 million in 2028.

The planned presentation also outlines plans for an unnamed subscription service outside of Blue, called “X,” which Musk expects to attract nine million subscribers in 2023 and 104 million by 2028. Earlier this week, Musk hinted at imposing fees on governments and companies “Small cost” to use Twitter. Whatever the “X” subscription, combined revenue from it and Blue should reach the $10 billion mark by 2028, making up a large portion of the $26.4 billion in total revenue, Musk believes the service will reach that same year.

according to timesTwitter is supposed to make up the rest of its total projected revenue through ads, which Musk expects to make Twitter about $12 billion by 2028. Twitter relied on ads As the primary source of income in the past, but Musk, from He said in a now-deleted tweet that Twitter should remove ads for paid subscribersHe wants ads to make up only 45 percent of Twitter’s total revenue.

Musk’s suite of presentations reportedly includes plans to make $15 million from some sort of payments business as well, which he expects to grow to $1.3 billion by 2028. Twitter is currently letting users Creators Advicebuying super followas well as interaction with limited Shopping Features that links users to seller sites to make purchases. With Musk being a co-founder of PayPal, he may see room for expansion.

times He notes that Musk also expects Twitter to generate an unspecified portion of revenue through it data license, a company that involves selling millions of tweets daily on its platform to companies and developers who analyze the data for market insights or consumer trends. Last year, Twitter earned $572 million (PDF) in data licensing and “other revenue,” but it’s not clear how or if Musk plans to expand that business. If Twitter is to resell individual tweets, our Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel pointing to That Elon “would have to fundamentally change Twitter’s terms of service,” not to mention contend with “substantial revenue sharing and fair use issues,” since tweets are copyrighted by the users who posted them.

Building Twitter’s services will take some work, a potential factor behind Musk’s plans to hire an additional 3,600 employees. times He notes that Musk aims to have 11,072 employees by 2025, though the presentation shows Twitter staff increasing in 2022 and then declining in 2023 before trending upwards again.