As the company tries to monetize more of its services just a few months after Elon Musk took over the company, it will start charging developers for API access in a bid to generate additional revenue. The announcement is part of Musk's push to bring the social platform to profitability.
From February 9 onwards, Twitter said it would charge developers to use its API. The company added that developers would no longer have free access to its API, both v 2 and v 1.1. The basic tier would be introduced on Twitter. It didn't say how much it would charge.
Over the past few years, hundreds of millions of people have sent more than a trillion Tweets, with billions more coming every week, according to Twitter. The self-titled Mr. Tweet said the platform is losing $4 M a day, just six days after taking control of Twitter. As part of the effort to reduce costs, Musk laid off about 50% of the company's 7,500 employees. Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 in a $44 billion deal.
The cost of Twitter has dropped due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation, and we did everything we could to appease the activists, he said in a tweet. Extremely messed up! They are trying to destroy free speech in America.