In early prototypes, a Twitter user was depicted asking the musician Post Malone about his favorite records. Such paid messages could appear in a special area of the direct message inbox, and the celebrities would have to choose to receive them. Twitter would most likely take a cut of the fees, according to the documents.
Understand Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover
The plans for paid direct messaging remain fluid, and there is no guarantee that the product will launch, the people with knowledge of the matter said.
Product teams are also working on “paywalled” videos, an idea similar to offerings from platforms like OnlyFans, which hosts content for creators in the adult content industry. Under this plan, Twitter might ask users to pay a fee to watch a video, splitting the revenue with the creators who post the content, two people familiar with the project said.
Mr. Musk has also shown interest in Vine, the looping video app that was popular among young creators before Twitter shut it down in 2016. He ran a Twitter poll on Sunday asking his followers whether or not he should bring it back, and he has commanded internal teams to examine the code to see if reviving it is possible, two people familiar with the conversations said.
Mr. Musk’s new Twitter Blue subscription service, which will give subscribers the check mark next to their username, is aiming to begin on Nov. 7 in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to internal documents seen by The Times. Subscribers would not need their identities authenticated to get the check mark, the documents suggested.
The documents also noted that there would be “an interim period where the check would be on both Blue subscribers accounts and previously verified users.” Eventually, verified accounts that do not pay for Twitter Blue will lose the check marks. There are more than 423,000 verified accounts on Twitter.
The documents also outlined plans for “government accounts to keep their Verified badge without paying for Blue.” Some features for the subscription service already announced by Mr. Musk, including higher rankings for subscribers’ replies and the ability to upload longer videos, would not begin on Nov. 7, according to the documents. A European rollout was also planned, with the Twitter Blue team having worked to align the product with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation privacy law.
