Elon Musk’s month pushing Twitter Blue failed to win many subscribers

A blue verification check on the page of Twitter Inc. on a smartphone arranged in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Monday, Nov. 7, 2022. Elon Musk’s agreement to buy Twitter Inc. is sending some users searching for alternative platforms — with mixed success. Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg

Twitter Inc. is struggling to sell users on its new subscription product, Twitter Blue, according to a new report.

Only 116,000 people signed up for the service of 2.6 million people who visited the Twitter Blue sales page on the web in March, according to estimates by SimiliarWeb, which analyzes internet traffic.

Twitter owner Elon Musk had said that starting this month, only subscribers to Twitter Blue would be eligible for verification check marks, previously reserved for public figures. In March, when a person who got a check through the old system logged onto Twitter, they sometimes received a message encouraging them to sign up to pay for Twitter Blue in order to keep their status.

The change in rules was expected to cause an uptick in subscriptions. Recently, Musk decided to give some verified users more time to decide whether to pay him.

Twitter Blue had less than 300,000 subscribers in February of this year, according to The Information. Even accounting for the additional 116,000 sign ups estimated by SimilarWeb, less than 1% of monthly users are currently subscribed to Twitter Blue. SimilarWeb’s estimates do not include sign-ups through a mobile app or bulk purchases from organizations.

More than 500 million people use Twitter on a monthly basis, Musk has said. Twitter’s advertising revenue has declined by 50% between October and March, he tweeted last month.

Despite attempts to win back advertisers, many have not returned. Twitter Blue, the subscription service which costs $8 per month, hasn’t yet grown enough to recoup the lost revenue.

Twitter declined to comment.