When I first heard, all the way back in April, that Elon Musk was putting in a takeover bid to purchase Twitter, I was skeptical that the plan would ever even materialize. So far removed from Musk’s typical business ventures, I frankly did not understand the profitability scheme he was envisioning with the acquisition. It felt more like a statement than a serious offer.
My hunch was proven (at least, temporarily) correct when the bid was put on hold after Musk got cold feet. Then, after several months of civil proceedings wherein Twitter sued Musk for his lack of commitment to the bid, the acquisition was given new life. Musk reaffirmed his bid, on the condition that Twitter call off the trial against him. His wish was their command, and in late October, Musk acquired Twitter for forty-four billion dollars.
While the entire acquisition was marred with controversy and questions of the exact purpose of the takeover, the first major post-purchase scandal fluttered into the mainstream when Musk announced almost instantaneous layoffs of key executives and employees. Taking the company private, his goal was to make cuts to both bandage the bleeding hole in his pocket, as well as align Twitter with his hazy vision of reduced content moderation by letting go of employees who would impede what he dubbed to be “free speech.”
On the heels of these major organizational changes came the timidness of advertisers, who were hesitant to continue propagating their marketing materials on Twitter, due to the uncertainty of Musk’s vision for the platform. Once a safe-haven for advertising, both formally through sponsored posts and informally through user-based sponsorships, Twitter became a breeding ground for misalignment with advertiser values almost overnight. While not every advertiser is “family friendly,” few advertisers (and businesses, for that matter) wish to be associated with a place where content might have little moderation—a Wild West caricature of social media. Sensing that controversy would continue to cast its shadow over the platform, many advertisers were worried about the effect a presence on such a platform would have on their reputation, so they stopped funneling money into Twitter advertising space. The consequences of this are obvious: less advertisers means less money, means less revenue to cover expenses, of which there were approximately forty-four billion dollars worth.
In response to this increasingly disastrous—financially speaking—acquisition of Twitter, Musk revealed that he would be charging $7.99 per month for the blue checkmarks that indicate a user is “verified.” For those unfamiliar, a blue checkmark would appear next to the user’s name if they went through and were approved under the Twitter verification process, usually with the connotation that this user was an influencer of some variety. This could include actors, athletes, social media influencers, and popular pages. From what I had seen over the years, the threshold for what counted as verifiable had grown in scope, leading to a flood of blue checkmarks over time. It got to the point where you might see a tweet from someone with a blue checkmark, go to their profile, and see that they had around five thousand followers (sometimes even less). Not to be the arbiter for what should constitute a verified user, but it felt as though the whole process was being watered down and constantly undermined by loosening requirements.
In that sense, I think that restricting the process actually has a benefit. However, the way Musk went about it did absolutely nothing to address the concern I just highlighted, because it was an additional piece of verification, not verification in lieu of the traditional blue checkmark. Essentially, users could pay $7.99 per month to have the Twitter Blue designation, on top of their old official Twitter verified designation, effectively creating two forms of user verification. The question that Musk failed to ask was: why would anyone buy this when they already have their (free) verification badge displayed proudly on their profile?
Moreover, the actual verification badge comes with a description when clicked that states that it is the “official,” and granted based on the account’s involvement in government, news, entertainment or other categories. On the other hand, a Twitter Blue account bluntly says that the user paid for it. Otherwise, the Twitter Blue checkmark and the official verification checkmark look virtually identical, which is maybe Musk’s dumbest design decision. Why would someone who already has the verification badge pay for a checkmark that is exactly the same as one they already have for free? The answer is that Musk believed that the average Twitter user would be enticed to buy this checkmark to make themselves equal to those with official checkmarks, basically feigning celebrity status to the uninformed.
This is a gross overestimation of the value of a blue checkmark for the average person. I think that Musk, or whoever drafted this idea, conflated the picture of an up-and-coming celebrity yearning for a blue checkmark with the picture of an average person yearning for the same blue checkmark. In the former case, up-and-comers may be enticed to buy into Twitter Blue because verification provides legitimacy to their accounts, and could lead to sponsorships, more engagement, etc. There are clear benefits to being verified on Twitter, which entices many to apply, but it is hard to make the logical conclusion that everyone wants this. If I am some three-hundred follower user? Why would I possibly care about the checkmark? My engagement numbers are miniscule, and I don’t use Twitter for business reasons. Now, if Twitter never expanded its requirements for verification, I could genuinely see this being a semi-lucrative business proposition. Say, for example, official verification was reserved for those with at least five-hundred thousand followers. In that case, those with less followers may be tempted to pay for Twitter Blue to bypass that threshold.
The way it is now, following the suspension of Twitter Blue, the official verification process has been removed in favour of this paid option. This means that any future accounts must be verified via payment, rather than verification criteria. Therefore, it seems that Musk is banking on an influx of new users, who would otherwise fit the old criteria, to pay for this service. This is not an inherently bad idea, but it does little other than put a tiny piece of tape over the dozen cannonball holes in the sinking Twitter ship. In terms of short-term survival, this does nothing to generate revenue, except from a small portion of the population who buy into Twitter Blue largely as a result of curiosity or FOMO. This in turn hurts the long-term viability of Twitter Blue, as not many will be willing to pay for a blue checkmark (up-and-coming celebrity or not) if Twitter is a barren wasteland of inactive accounts as a result of cuts in developers and other bizarre changes.
The most obvious drawbacks of the implementation of this program have been seen in the resulting scandals surrounding brands like Eli Lily and Lockheed Martin, who had users impersonating them with a $7.99 blue checkmark and releasing tweets that would be detrimental to their stock prices. This was always going to be an apparent consequence, as $7.99 is hardly a barrier for a laugh. One needs only to look at the slew of parody and impersonation accounts already present on Twitter, prior to paid checkmarks, to figure out that this may have been a bad idea for brands and celebrities. With scams running rampant on virtually every social media platform, fooling the unsuspecting user who may equate a blue checkmark with legitimacy was an inevitable by-product of Twitter Blue. While a Twitter user asking you to go to Walmart to get $1500 worth of iTunes gift cards might be suspicious to most, that same Twitter user posing as Jeff Bezos with a blue checkmark might give the green light to some.
Ultimately, there was a lack of foresight as to who would be interested in paying the monthly fee for something like this. The benefits of Twitter Blue, things like 50% fewer advertisements on your feed, have been scaled back for more generic benefits such as access to new features. So, the rationale is that you pay $7.99 to be a tester for features, which is great for the subsection of society that is vehemently opposed to paying testers for their work, but absolutely useless for everyone else.
So how could Twitter Blue have been improved before launch? For starters, removing the official verification badge would have made every single celebrity who wanted to stay on Twitter, and every single company, sprint to the registration page to keep their apparent legitimacy. The Twitter verification process could have been merged with Twitter Blue, effectively moving the quality assurance team responsible for verification over to Twitter Blue to check that people were not paying for fraudulent verifications. It seems—and this is fully speculation—that there was absolutely no process for ensuring that only non-fraudulent users could buy Twitter Blue, which allowed these fake accounts to crop up.
Alternatively, keeping the official verification process, but making Twitter Blue a subscription service with tangible benefits and a distinct badge could have differentiated it from the normal Twitter experience. Instead of dangling the prospect of editing tweets behind Twitter Blue’s experimental features, they could have unlocked those features immediately for Twitter Blue users. This may have enticed those who didn’t necessarily care about being influencers, but just wanted a better Twitter experience, into forking over $7.99 per month.
Lastly—and this is absolutely the final boss of capitalism—Musk could have charged exorbitantly more for Twitter Blue while limiting it exclusively to companies. As has been historically apparent, slapping a “Corporate Version” sticker on any product will allow the seller to mark it up by 1500%. Rather than making it $7.99 dollars for everyone, companies included, they could have made it eight hundred dollars for corporations. If the value of the checkmark is grounded in apparent legitimacy for a company, every single large corporation would be lined up to pay for it, assuming Twitter was not completely run into the ground. This would largely do away with impersonation due to the cost of entry, and it would likely be coupled with a better vetting process to ensure that minimal fraudulent accounts are created. If anyone from Elon Musk’s team is reading this: Have your people call my people and I will create an investor-friendly PowerPoint with all of these ideas, complete with graphs where the arrows only go up.
As it stands at the time of writing this, Musk has pulled the plug on his original Twitter Blue. Fret not, Twitter Blue fans, because Musk instituted what appears to be Twitter Blue 2.0, which is basically just the original Twitter Blue but it blocks new accounts from subscribing for ninety days. Now, surely no human could ever find the willpower to wait ninety days to make a joke post that could potentially tank a corporation’s shares, so Musk is really thinking two steps ahead here. If you are curious how successful this idea has been, in terms of revenue figures, it was reported that Twitter Blue brought in a little less than five-hundred thousand dollars in the first two days of its launch. Unfortunately, Twitter is neither a small nor a mid-sized business, so that number is a drop in the bucket, especially when juxtaposed against the reported four-million dollar loss per day they have been suffering. To put it into context: Twitter Blue would have to make $120 million per month by itself to overset those losses, which amounts to fifteen million Twitter Blue users. I do not even know fifteen people that would pay for Twitter Blue, so the forecast looks bleak for Twitter.
This was truly one of the more bizarre business decisions I have seen in recent months, and I am here, popcorn in hand, to watch the saga unfold, and the entire Twitter pantheon grow.