According to discoveries by Chris Messina, the inventor of the hashtag, in the app’s code, this functionality will be paid for.
As part of the transition from X (formerly Twitter) to a “All-purpose app”Elon Musk plans to allow voice and video calls on the platform. However, this feature will not be available to all users, but only to subscribers of X Premium (formerly known as Twitter Blue). according to Chris Messina’s discoveriesthe inventor of the hashtag who left the social network last April, will have to pay to access this functionality when it becomes available.
In one of the screenshots of the app code shared by the IT developer on Threads, the lines indicate a warning that appears when one user tries to send a private message to another, indicating that “Voice and video calls are a premium feature” And encourage him to do so “Sign up for access”.
Encourage users to pay
With this feature, subscribers will be able to choose to receive audio and video calls from other verified users, people they follow, or individuals in their address book, the app icon also reveals. At the end of August, Elon Musk announced that it would be available on Android, iOS, Mac and PC, without requiring a phone number. “X is the global directory”“, wrote the billionaire.
Reserving voice and video calls for paying subscribers is another way for X to encourage users to sign up for its paid plan. Despite its many advantages, the X Premium struggles to convince. While the platform has 550 million monthly active users – according to Elon Musk – only one million people subscribe to its paid plan, according to researcher Travis Browne. For comparison, just over a year after its launch, Snapchat+ has just surpassed 5 million subscribers.
Added to this is another difficulty facing the social network: since changing its name, it has declined in the rankings of the most downloaded applications on the App Store. This decline is due in part to the absence of the word Twitter from the Apple App Store. As monitored by the site MashableThe company decided to add the phrase “formerly Twitter” below the new name of the platform to address this problem.
