- X is looking to generate new revenue by selling off old Twitter handles, Forbes reported.
- On some occasions, X had sought up to $50,000 from potential buyers.
- X is looking to address a huge advertising shortfall following Elon Musk’s takeover last year.
Elon Musk’s X is working on a plan to generate new revenue by selling off old Twitter handles, Forbes reported Friday.
Forbes reporter Alex Konrad viewed emails sent by current X employees that suggest the company is looking to make available prized account names that their original owners aren’t using. X’s inactive account policy encourages users to log in at least 30 days to prevent their accounts being removed.
On some occasions, Forbes reported, the so-called @Handle Team had sought up to $50,000 from potential buyers.
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company is looking to plug a huge advertising revenue shortfall following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter last November. Some advertisers have stopped or drastically reduced their spending on X over the past year amid concerns about the content it hosts and the general reliability and effectiveness of its ad platform.
An overwhelming majority of the world’s biggest-spending advertisers have dropped X following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company, according to data provided exclusively to Insider last month by the marketing consultancy Ebiquity. A separate analysis from the advertising analytics firm Guideline found that X’s US ad revenue has dropped 55% or more each month since Musk’s takeover.
X execs, on the other hand, have painted a brighter picture of its ad business. CEO Linda Yaccarino said in an onstage interview in September that “90% of the top 100 advertisers have returned to X in the last twelve weeks alone,” referring to X’s 100 top spenders from the prior year.
X has looked to subscriptions to address the advertising drop-off. X launched a paid-for premium offering last year and updated it last month with different tiers to access additional features like boosted visibility and no ads. Musk said this week that X Premium+ subscribers would get early access to its soon-to-launch ChatGPT rival, Grok.
Advertising accounted for 90% of X’s revenue in 2021 when it last publicly reported its financial results. Musk said shortly after his takeover that he wanted the company to derive approximately half of its revenue from subscriptions.
X recently awarded stock grants to employees that indicated the company is now worth around $19 billion, less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid to buy it a year ago.
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