Blue Tick at a Price? Elon Musk Plans To 'Monetise' Twitter User Verification
The 'Chief Twit' reportedly wants all verified Twitter users to cough up $8 or lose the coveted blue tick.
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Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk wants everyone to be verified on the platform as long as they pay for it.
Musk’s ultimatum: Employees have been directed to roll out paid verification for users by 7 November or they’ll be shown the door, The Verge reported citing anonymous sources and internal files.
How will it work? The new mechanism for verification will not be in the form of a new feature. Instead, engineers are looking to build upon Twitter’s existing subscription option called ‘Twitter Blue’.
Twitter Blue was rolled out in 2021
It is currently available in four countries: the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
Twitter Blue works on iOS, Android, or twitter.com
Users who signed up for Twitter Blue so far have had access to premium features that lets them undo tweets, apply themes, create folders of bookmarked tweets, customise how the app looks on their devices, and more
Changing it up: Now, Musk reportedly wants to add paid verification to the list of perks offered to Twitter Blue subscribers.
Already verified? You'll likely have 90 days to subscribe to Twitter Blue or the coveted blue tick mark could be removed from your profile.
What’s the damage? The $4.99 a month subscription fee will be hiked to $8. Musk later said that this price will be adjusted based on the country, proportionate to purchasing power parity.
The Chief Twit’s big picture: Musk has made his intentions clear from the get-go – take down the bots.
Changing how Twitter verifies its users could be the first step in meeting this goal.
“The whole verification process is being revamped right now,” Musk had tweeted on Sunday, 30 October.
However, whether this could put a dent in the platform's bot count while also putting a stop to user impersonation is unclear.
Make Twitter profitable again: Twitter’s earnings reported over previous quarters have revealed that advertising is its primary source of revenue. Alongside ads, Musk has reportedly turned to subscriptions to make up the other half of the company’s overall revenue.
Early in May, The New York Times had reported that Musk aims to increase Twitter’s annual revenue from $5 billion (in 2021) to $26.4 billion by 2028.
What else is happening? A lot, apparently. Musk has wasted no time in making changes at Twitter, The Verge wrote.
Users who are logged out of Twitter are now shown the platform’s ‘Explore’ page instead of the signature login page with the Twitter bird against a graffiti background.
Mass layoffs are reportedly on the cards for middle managers and engineers as their contributions to the code base are under scrutiny. With managers drawing up lists of those to be axed, The Verge reported that the firing could begin as soon as this week.
Tesla engineers have been roped in as advisors of the social media company.
Meanwhile, with so much going on, Twitter employees are burning the midnight lamp to execute Musk’s projects within tight deadlines.
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