Elon Musk said at the Baron Investment Conference: “Please subscribe to Twitter Verified, it’s $7.99.” He said Twitter can ultimately be “one of the most valuable companies in the world. Speaking at the Baron Investment Conference, Musk said Twitter had revenue challenges prior to his takeover.

“To be frank, Twitter was having pretty serious revenue challenges and cost challenges before the acquisition started.”

American investor Ron Baron interviewed Elon Musk during the conference on topics including Starship’s future plans. The discussion also centered around Twitter’s mass employee lay offs. As much as half of Twitter’s 7,500 employees are facing the axe after the Tesla CEO’s acquisition of the social media company.

Meanwhile, Baron said prior to the interview that Musk could take Twitter public again. He said the previous administration managed to get maximum value for Twitter shareholders with Elon Musk’s acquisition.

The Twitter Overhaul

In a latest, Musk said Twitter saw massive drop in revenue due to pressure from activist groups on advertisers. This could be an indication of his justification to the imposing of $8 fee for Twitter Blue service. Also, this could also justify the mass Twitter layoffs. Earlier, he officially announced the decision to offer the subscription service at $8 per month. The decision came in context of a huge lash out from Twitter community after he initially proposed at $20 monthly fee.

“Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America.”

In the revamped subscription service, the subscribers will get only half as many advertisements as subscribers who don’t opt for the paid service get. They will also get priority in replies, mentions and search besides being able to bypass the paywall for paid articles.