X, despite coming under fire for its “X Premium” subscription service that charges users for its blue checkmarks, now makes almost a quarter of its revenue from premium subscriptions and data licenses, On has learned TheMoney.
It was not immediately clear how much of the new business at Elon Musk’s company, formerly known as Twitter, comes from paid subscriptions versus data licenses, and insiders suspect the latter account for the bulk.
Previously, X made less than 10% of its revenue from data licensing deals and earned nothing from subscriptions, the sources said.
Over the past year, X has renegotiated data licensing agreements with Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Oracle, Microsoft and Bloomberg to charge higher fees.
The agreements allow companies to extract data from X to improve their own products, for example allowing Google searches to show relevant results for X.
As sources said.
Since X is private, it does not reveal its earnings, income, or data on the number of users it has. Third-party estimates suggest that advertising revenue has fallen more than 50%, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
Company sources question these figures. They also dispute third-party data that suggests monthly active users are down 15% year-over-year to 183 million.
Musk has tweeted that the social network has 550 million monthly active users and that the company has gained 4% new subscriptions in the last year.
According another report, Twitter is now worth just $19 billion, less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for it.
Since Musk bought the company, he has laid off about 80% of employees and dismantled the blue tick system that verifies users.
Musk, a “free speech absolutist,” has struggled to figure out how to moderate content on the platform, scaring away advertisers as a result. The company has explored several ways to increase revenue, including allowing users to pay to remove ads.
Company sources believe that efforts to diversify revenue streams and charge for new services, such as editing Tweets, writing longer posts, and the ability to upload longer videos, will continue to bear fruit.
A company spokesperson declined to comment.
