Regardless of X Premium (previously Twitter Blue) failing to catch on the best way that Elon Musk had hoped, the platform’s eager to seek out new methods to spice up its income consumption, because it appears to be like to combine extra AI parts, which come at a major price, whereas additionally offsetting its advert income losses.
Alongside that line, simply earlier than Christmas, X introduced that the worth of its X Premium+ subscription tier, the most costly X subscription possibility, can be growing by 30%, in an effort to fund the continuing enlargement of its choices.
As per X:
“We’re updating the X Premium+ subscription value on December 21, 2024. New subscribers pays the up to date value beginning that day. Should you’re an present subscriber and your subsequent billing cycle begins earlier than January 20, 2025, you’ll be charged at your present price; in any other case, the brand new price will start together with your first billing cycle after that date.”
The brand new value provides a further $6 per 30 days to the X Premium+ value, rising from $16 to $22 per 30 days, or $229 yearly.
X says that the upper value level will allow it to supply a very ad-free expertise for its high paying customers, whereas additionally enabling increased utilization limits for its Grok AI fashions.
It’ll additionally give X extra capability to pay creators through its up to date income share mannequin:
“We’ve shifted our income share mannequin to reward content material high quality and engagement quite than advert views alone. Your Premium+ subscription price contributes to this new, extra equitable system the place creator earnings are tied to the general worth they carry to X, not impressions of advertisements.”
X introduced this transformation again in October, with this system shifting from offering creators with a reduce of advert income for the advertisements displayed of their publish replies (and seen by X Premium subscribing customers), to paying creators based mostly on engagement from paying customers.
The added price of X Premium+ will now contribute to this, by giving X a bit further revenue to share, whereas additionally, as famous, funding its ongoing AI improvement.
Although, technically, that’s carried out through xAI, which is a separate firm to X itself. xAI, which is accountable for the fashions and methods that energy its Grok AI chatbot, simply closed a Collection C funding spherical of $6 billion, including to the $6 billion that it additionally raised again in Might, enabling it to broaden its operations.
xAI has used the vast majority of that funding to construct its “Colossus” AI information heart in Memphis, which includes 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs into the xAI operation. That places it on par with the AI methods presently being operated by Meta and Google, although each of them have considerably extra capability, and functionality, to broaden additional at this stage.
However for now not less than, the brand new AI computing cluster has propelled xAI right into a place of legit competitors on AI improvement, because it appears to be like to achieve a foothold within the area, and money in on the anticipated AI increase within the years forward.
How a rise in X Premium+ pricing may straight contribute to this isn’t clear, however X has continued to pump out new updates for its Grok chatbot (the newest being improved picture era), whereas it’s additionally launched a standalone Grok app in some areas.
And it’s utilizing X to advertise this:
So there’s an intertwining there, although the place the strains are drawn between the 2 isn’t clear, so it’s unimaginable to say how every contributes to the opposite on this respect.
Regardless, that’s one place that X says the additional subscription consumption shall be going. Although as famous, the worth improve may be an try to cowl up for the shortfall in X Premium subscribers, which has left one other gap in X’s income projections.
In response to evaluation carried out by TechCrunch and AppFigures again in October, X Premium presently has round 1.3 million subscribers in complete, which includes all tiers of the providing. Of that, solely a fraction can be paying for X Premium+, and as such, a value improve of $6 on this class isn’t going to be a serious needle-shifter on this respect.
However those that are paying for the highest tier are additionally much less more likely to cancel, so perhaps, X is simply cashing in the place it will probably. But, the possibilities of X Premium ever turning into a serious income driver, as Elon Musk had initially projected, appear to be impossible at this stage.
In his unique enterprise technique plan for Twitter, which he shared with potential buyers shortly after he took over on the app (and earlier than the “X” re-brand), Musk predicted that Twitter Blue (now X Premium) would attain 69 million paying subscribers by 2025, and 159 million by 2028.
It’s a protracted, great distance off that, and outdoors of value will increase like this, it’s exhausting to see how X will be capable of generate any actual income traction from its subscription choices.
Except it comes out with some mind-blowing add-ons to sweeten the deal. I’m undecided what they may even be, however it appears possible that AI will play an element someway.
Personally, I keep that social platforms are over-valuing the utility of options like AI picture creation to common customers. However perhaps Elon and Co. have one thing else up their collective sleeves.
