Elon Musk is considering charging Twitter users $20 a month (£17.30) or $240 a year for the blue tick on their account as the world’s richest man prepares an overhaul of the social media platform.
Tesla CEO plans changes to Twitter subscription service Blue, according to Platformer’s technical bulletin, including a fee increase of $4.99 per month to $19.99. Users verified by the platform – who have a blue checkmark marking them as a valid source – will have 90 days to register with Blue or lose their checkmark.
Musk did not comment for the story, but tweeted to his more than 110 million followers on Sunday that “the entire vetting process is now being reconstructed.”
The entire verification process is now being modernized
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 30, 2022
He also indicated a Twitter The poll, launched Monday morning, asked Twitter users how much they would pay a month for a blue tick: $5; 10 dollars; 15 USD; or “wouldn’t pay”. The survey was organized by tech investor Jason Kalacanis, a Musk employee who is part of the team brought in by the multi-billionaire to help steer the business after the $44 billion takeover. A basic Netflix subscription costs $6.99 or £4.99 per month.
The vast majority of respondents said they would not pay at all; but a significant minority indicated that they would.
How much would you pay to get verified and blue ticked on Twitter?
— jason@calacanis.com (@Jason) October 31, 2022
As of 2021, Twitter has about 400,000 verified users, but the program has long been plagued by problems. Introduced in 2009 in response to a rising tide of celebrity concern about impersonation, including from Kanye West, who in the blog that “EVERYTHING TWITTER OFFERS, I NEED LESS” – the “blue check” quickly became a status symbol rather than simple proof of identity.
This led to Twitter removing the verification status of controversial users such as right-winger Milo Yiannopoulos, who faced criticism for giving his followers white supremacy, and eventually suspended the entire program for several years before resuming it in 2021 year.
Even if each verified user paid a fee, the annual revenue would be less than one-tenth of the estimated $1 billion in interest payments on Musk’s loans to buy the site.
But Musk may have bigger goals: One of his stated goals when he proposed to buy Twitter in April was to “verify all the people,” and expanding the subscription service’s niche could provide significant revenue.
Neither does The Washington Post reported on Monday that Musk planned to lay off 25% of Twitter’s 7,500 employees as part of the first round of job cuts at the San Francisco-based company. During a conversation with a Twitter user on Sunday, Musk was asked what was “the messiest” thing about the company, to which he replied, “It seems like 10 people ‘manage’ every person who codes.”
Musk’s plans for Twitter since the takeover have largely been consistent with his account on the platform. In another hint of big changes at the company, Musk launched a poll on Monday asking users whether he should bring back Vine, the video-sharing app that was seen as a precursor to TikTok but was shut down by Twitter in 2016.
Musk indicated that TikTok’s challenge would be a motive for the transition in an exchange with YouTube star Mr Beast, who wrote that “if you did it and actually competed with TikTok, that would be fun.” Musk replied: “What can we do to make it better than TikTok?”. Twitter has 230 million users compared to TikTok’s over 1 billion.
Musk and his team also appear to be reviewing internal communications sent by employees in the run-up to the takeover, after he wrote a chat message sent to a senior employee on Monday morning in May 2022.
He also promised to maintain the retention policy and keep bans on limited accounts to Twitter content moderation boarddeclared a billionaire last week, met.
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