Just now, Elon Musk wrote in his account that he found a person who will take the post of CEO on Twitter. She will begin her duties in 6 weeks. This comes amid Elon Musk’s chaotic management of the company and some really bad data about the subscription service, which only confirms that although there were many changes, but not all of them were successful and correct.
Twitter’s Problems Continue After Elon Musk’s Purchase of the Company
New data suggests that Twitter Blue’s troubles since its launch almost 6 months ago have been worse than previously shown. Twitter Blue is a subscription service that provides subscribers with premium features. But monetization model doesn’t seem to work. Elon Musk in his tweets, between meme posts and pseudo-profound speeches, regularly talks about new features on Twitter, maintains a changelog. But the features failed. And the churn rate is proof of that.
Twitter Subscription Churn Rate
Of the circa 150 000 early Twitter Blue users who subscribed in November, only 68 157 were still subscribed at the end of April. A churn rate of more than 50% in 6 months is a very, very bad indicator for a subscription service. This metric becomes a very big challenge for Twitter.
In fact, the percentage can be even higher, since according to numerous reports, some users cannot get rid of the blue check mark even after they have stopped paying for it for 2 or more months. In particular, such a problem is reported by journalist Stephen Monacelli from Gizmodo.
As they say, things are known in comparison. So, for example, Recurly shared the information that their annual churn rate is 5.57% for those accounts that have subscribed.
Netflix’s churn has been at the level of a few percent in recent years. In 2022, the percentage of churn rate increased slightly to 3.5%.
Twitter Blue Features Discourage User Retention
For $8/month, you won’t have to delete and repost your tweet if you see an error in it, because you can EDIT IT. Isn’t it mind-blowing? No? No.
But a more attractive feature for this money is that you can increase the number of users you could reach. Your post will have a priority to be shown for others in their “For You” feed.
The main reason why Twitter Blue features fail is that they are not particularly meaningful to most users. Most people use Twitter to read the news, connect with friends and colleagues, and not to promote their businesses or personal brands. They may not see the point in paying for features that don’t enhance their core platform experience.
In its current form, users don’t need Twitter Blue, most users will simply continue to use the free version of Twitter. Twitter Blue may only remain attractive to the relatively small group of users who actually need them.
And it’s good that now when we talk about Twitter Blue, we are talking about a subscription, and not about verification. Because it was nonsense to announce the subscription service and promote it as a tool for verification on a monthly basis.
Dissatisfaction Among Paid Twitter Users
Elon Musk continues to trumpet about the subscription and tries to popularize it as much as possible. All Elon’s fetishists doesn’t really care about what he is doing. They look like an army of bots that simply like every tweet of Elon, repost, and thereby disperse any of his rants all over Twitter. But the numbers don’t really lie. Subscription benefits are not worth $8/month. The business concept is not well established. In fact, it was created in order to rip off people’s money, because Twitter is not self-sustaining.
At first there were those users who believed in the benefits of a paid service, but people quickly became disillusioned. What’s more, a lot of Twitter Blue users have publicly showed their dissatisfaction and say that they don’t feel that reach of their posts increased enough or significantly.
Will the new CEO be able to turn the tide and take the company out of deep water? We will soon find out.
