X Launches Latest Price Tiers for X Premium, Including an Ad-Free ‘Premium+‘

As promised by Elon Musk, X has now released two recent tiers for its X Premium subscription offering, as it really works to get more people paying to make use of the app.

The recent tiers will complement the present X Premium package, with “Premium+”, priced at $US16 monthly, offering an ad-free X experience, and “Premium Basic”, at $US3 monthly, providing a few of its additional features.

First off, on Premium Basic, X’s cheaper subscription pitch. The Basic package comes with some add-on features, including post editing, longer posts, and encrypted DMs.

It doesn’t provide you with a blue checkmark, though it does provide you with a “small reply boost”, meaning that your posts within the app usually tend to be seen.

Though what “small” means on this context isn’t clear. And evidently, X isn’t really sure yet either:

“Now, people on X will see a slight preference for replies from verified accounts over other replies. We’re currently testing the degrees at which we prioritize content from Premium subscribers relative to the opposite aspects we consider in conversation rankings.”

So it’s probably relative to what number of users enroll, and the way much that then influences the extent of boost that X may give posts from paying users. But at this point, Basic subscribers will get a limited boost.

Which is healthier than nothing, but I’m unsure that it’s an important incentive.

Also, the undeniable fact that Basic users don’t get a blue checkmark looks like a missed opportunity. The difficulty with that is that nearly the entire add-on Basic incentives are geared towards individuals who post within the app, but 80% of X users never post. So these options aren’t more likely to be an enormous lure, even for $US3 monthly, whereas a blue tick, at the very least in theory, might drive more sign-ups.

But nevertheless, the checkmark now only shows that you just’re a paying user, not a high-profile person, so perhaps that’s not an enormous lure either.

Also, Basic users aren’t eligible for X’s ad revenue share program.

The “X Premium+” tier, meanwhile, includes the entire X Premium incentives, including the most important recent addition, within the removal of ads out of your experience.

The $US16 fee will ideally account for the loss that X will incur by reducing ad exposure, with previous insights showing that X currently generates around $US12 per user, monthly based on ad exposure. So it needed to charge at the very least that, while also accounting for variances in ad intake.

The removal of ads could potentially be a high-value offering for at the very least some users, though the worth of avoiding ads, versus paying $US168 per yr (X’s discounted annual package) to make use of X might be not a viable calculation for many.

But there are other advantages.

As you possibly can see within the chart above, Premium+ users also get access to each subscriber profit, while additionally they get the “largest reply boost”, which, again, can be relative to overall take-up. But, essentially, you’re maximizing your probabilities of your posts being seen, while also avoiding ads.

Possibly that’ll be appealing to brands, who don’t need to pay for X ads, though that might also see X’s reply streams stuffed with spammy promos and vague responses linked to viral posts.

Overall, it seems fairly pricey for an ad-free experience, which most individuals are already used to, so I’m unsure that it’s going to be an enormous seller. But the brand new offerings do provide alternatives, which should see at the very least some additional users subscribing to the app.

That is X’s latest push to spice up subscription intake, which Elon believes is a key avenue to solving a few of X’s biggest challenges.

By getting more users to pay for the app, that, at the very least in theory, will act as a disincentive for bot farms, because as more users subscribe, that may then higher highlight the bot profiles in-stream, as they’ll be the non-paying, non-checkmark accounts. Though the brand new Basic package doesn’t provide you with a checkmark either, so it won’t be effective on this respect.

Reply boosts also mean that bot accounts, which might’t pay (because it requires a mobile number and bank card for every) will get less reach, which could, again in theory, make it harder for bot peddlers to achieve traction within the app.

Various cybersecurity experts don’t think that this approach will actually work, but again, you possibly can see the intended value of the push from this angle.

More paying subscribers also gives X one other revenue stream, so it’s then less reliant on ad dollars, and thus, less beholden to the whims of ad partners, which could higher enable Elon’s more free speech aligned approach.

And at last, dismantling the old verification system gave Elon a likelihood to hit back at profiles that he personally has grievances with. This will likely have been probably the most damaging element, as by removing legacy checkmarks, Elon also de-valued the reputational boost aspect of the blue tick, but it surely does now enable him to, say, remove the blue tick from The Latest York Times’ account if he doesn’t like what they report.

The last point also highlights a key challenge in Musk’s overall approach on the app, in that his decisions are driven by ideology and private perspective, versus what’s best for the business. Musk now often shares his opinions on various divisive topics, and people leanings are also clearly defining X policy.

Some would argue that previous Twitter management was also guided by its own ideology, but much of that was based on advice from authorities and official information providers. Musk appears to be increasingly leaning on less reputable sources, and aligning X policies with such. And that, at the very least for advertisers, puts the app in uncomfortable territory.

But Elon seems determined to remain the course together with his initial approach to managing the app, regardless that fewer than 0.5% of users have to this point signed as much as pay for X Premium.

Will that change now that X has lower-priced tiers? Will X’s other payments experiment, in charging all recent accounts a $1 fee in the event that they want to interact within the app, actually see extra money flowing into X’s coffers?

I actually have my doubts on each, but time will tell.