Twitter: X Marks The Spot For Elon Musk's Growth Plans

Elon Musk aims to increase Twitter's revenue fivefold to $26.4bn (£21.4bn) by 2028, a presentation to prospective Twitter investors seen by The New York Times (NYT) suggests.

Last year, Twitter's revenue was $5bn.

Plans to launch a new service called X are also revealed in the report, with an aim of nine million subscribers in its first year and 104 million by 2028.

Tech industry analyst Kyle Rees says the goals are "very tentative given the state of global and industry affairs".

The NYT says the revelations are in a "pitch deck" presented to investors "in recent days".

It suggests that Mr Musk hopes the number of Twitter users will rise from more than 200 million last year to over 900 million in 2028.

The document also reveals that Twitter's number of employees will grow by 3,600 by 2025. But the NYT reports that the staff headcount is likely to fluctuate in the short term.

Mr Musk recently tweeted that employees should anticipate work ethic expectations that are "extreme, but much less than I demand of myself".

In 2020, advertising generated about 90% of Twitter's revenue, the NYT says.

Subscription services will apparently pay a key part in growing Twitter's revenue, which it is hoped will generate nearly $10bn by 2028.

Part of the source of that income, the document suggests, will be an enigmatic new product called X, with its details still to be announced.

There is also a goal to increase the number of Twitter Blue subscribers to 69 million by 2025, and to 159 million by 2028.

Twitter Blue already exists, and gives users in countries where it is available features such as an undo tweet button, and ad-free articles for a subscription of $3 a month.

Twitter declined to comment on the NYT report.

Mr Rees from Gartner, a company which specialises in marketing research, told the BBC that "most of these goals seem contingent on growing platform users and subscribers".

But he added: "Here's an entrepreneur who has a proven track record of entering industries that favour incumbents, and successfully disrupting the status quo.

"Whether this is payments, satellites, spaceships, automotive, and now social media, [Mr] Musk has a knack for pushing entire categories of products and services forward, and I suspect that that's part of what we're going to see here.

"It's all very exciting. But, whether this translates to success, we'll have to see," he added.