Is a blue checkmark worth $20 a month?

[beowulf]

So Musk is officially in control of twitter and has already been putting his stamp on the company. Fired the CEO, CFO and CLO along with the whole board.

He seems to also want to to charge people who have the verified blue checkmark $20 a month for the privilege forcing those that are already verified to pay up as an extension of the Twitter blue paid program which is only 4.99 a month.

Twitter is planning to start charging $20 per month for verification

He is also already threatening employees who don't meet his deadline for this with termination...nice guy this Musk. He is also planning mass terminations...nice guy this Musk.

Click to read more...

 

[Scandale du Jour]

Guy is a clown on a power trip. When you have that kind of money... it is rather dangerous.

Positionning himself as the hero of the idiots was something I could not have predicted 3 or 4 years ago.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Good. Charge them!! Most are either stars who have millions of dollars, or "influencers" who are also getting paid well more than they should.

SO happy Elon took over!! Though I know half the country isn't....wah wah.

 

[Osprey]

Yeah, it's probably easily worth it. If you're famous enough that your reputation matters that much and someone might want to pretend to be you, $20/month to protect it is likely a drop in the bucket and a no brainer to you.

 

[beowulf]

What about NGOs that use the blue checkmark or charities so far there is no mention of it remaining free for them.

 

[Osprey]

What about NGOs that use the blue checkmark or charities so far there is no mention of it remaining free for them.

Organizations that rely on charity and donations would no doubt take in a lot more than $20/month by having a trusted, verified Twitter account. It'd likely be worth it for them, too, though it'll be nice (and smart of Musk) if exceptions are made, anyways.

 

[Beau Knows]

Still pretty funny that he was forced to buy Twitter after spending months pointing out how shitty it is.

 

[Scandale du Jour]

Still pretty funny that he was forced to buy Twitter after spending months pointing out how shitty it is.

And he overpaid for a meh asset with a lot of issues. An asset he depreciated by his dumb actions.

 

[SniperHF]

Twitter's previous verification rules were arbitrarily applied in the extreme, there are many cases of people applying while having fake accounts spamming shit out under their name, and being denied. There was (and is) also as lot of the equivalent of late 90's domain parking going on, tangentially related but IMO they should do something about that as well.

The original intended purpose of the check was to know you're seeing the real person, and not a fake account. While it still serves that purpose in some regards it's also used as a stupid status symbol for cliquey garbage. Smashing the latter is good, more uniformly applying identity confirmation of public figures is also good.

This kind of thing targets the cliq issues more than the verification ones, am not sure it's the right solution because it could add more confusion to the who's who problem, but they do need to change the way it's handled to some degree.

IMO the proper solution would be additional features for a premium product/price as a separate function from the blue check, and smash the cliquey bullshit by making identify verification available to anyone for a nominal one time fee (say $50, or some amount enough to keep spam/unserious requests away).

He is also planning mass terminations...nice guy this Musk.

Twitter has serious issues, their executives were a trainwreck and they are chock full of useless middle management. It wouldn't make sense to buy it and leave it alone.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

And he overpaid for a meh asset with a lot of issues. An asset he depreciated by his dumb actions.

Thank god he bought it then so he can fix that garbage platform created by idiots that he thankfully fired.

Outrage over Elon Musk’s new Twitter verification strategy is hilarious

Can you hear the loud whine emanating from the coasts?

nypost.com

 

[No Fun Shogun]

I’ll actively think less of people with blue check marks going forward. It’ll go from “whatever, don’t care” to “this person’s a loser with disposable income.”

 

[beowulf]

Twitter's previous verification rules were arbitrarily applied in the extreme, there are many cases of people applying while having fake accounts spamming shit out under their name, and being denied. There was (and is) also as lot of the equivalent of late 90's domain parking going on, tangentially related but IMO they should do something about that as well.

The original intended purpose of the check was to know you're seeing the real person, and not a fake account. While it still serves that purpose in some regards it's also used as a stupid status symbol for cliquey garbage. Smashing the latter is good, more uniformly applying identity confirmation of public figures is also good.

This kind of thing targets the cliq issues more than the verification ones, am not sure it's the right solution because it could add more confusion to the who's who problem, but they do need to change the way it's handled to some degree.

IMO the proper solution would be additional features for a premium product/price as a separate function from the blue check, and smash the cliquey bullshit by making identify verification available to anyone for a nominal one time fee (say $50, or some amount enough to keep spam/unserious requests away).


Twitter has serious issues, their executives were a trainwreck and they are chock full of useless middle management. It wouldn't make sense to buy it and leave it alone.

And as the train wreck Musk is he will fix it? not sure about that one.

 

[syz]

Tumblr 2.0

 

[pistolpete11]

I think a lot of people will end up paying it because a) they get more than $20/month value out of Twitter and/or b) they make enough money that they don't care. As long as there are enough free users there, it's worth it for the blue checks.

But I am more fascinated how this is going to play out in general. Musk touts free speech, but Twitter (and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat and whatever other platforms that are out there that I'm too old to know about) aren't the way they are because they are woke libs. They are like that because advertisers don't want their product associated with certain types of speech, images, etc. He has to appease those people whether he agrees with them or not. If he doesn't, there goes that revenue. If he does, how will his fan bois who think he's some free speech warrior respond?

 

[mouser]

Twitter has done a poor job to date of monetizing their platform. So it makes sense after a big buyout to find ways to improve the bottom line.

I expect there will be a lot more changes in the near future to drive revenue and profits.

 

[syz]

You can't significantly monetize your social media platform without outlawing porn to appease the far right credit card companies, and we all know by now what happens when these services do that.

 

[mouser]

You can't significantly monetize your social media platform without outlawing porn to appease the far right credit card companies, and we all know by now what happens when these services do that.

I’m struggling to understand this pretzel logic and how it applies to Twitter?

 

[beowulf]

Twitter has done a poor job to date of monetizing their platform. So it makes sense after a big buyout to find ways to improve the bottom line.

I expect there will be a lot more changes in the near future to drive revenue and profits.

Thing is polls and research show that very few people will pay for social media accounts. As the article I posted states, only about 400,000 people ever got the blue checkmarks and some are predicting that maybe 1/4 of them would pay the $20 a month to keep it. That would be about $24M a year, give or take, in revenue with is nothing when you consider they make in the billions of $ from advertising.

Also don't forget his purchase of the company also loaded them up with a ton of new debt as part of the deal, not including the debt he took on with the purchase. Right now banks are going to hold on to $13B in debt but not next year before they try and sell it to investors. The companies interest burden was $51M last year and with this new debt will be closer to $1B.

So ya, the future of this company is not stable at all and Musk might not be the savior some seem to think he is.

 

[Dolemite]

Yeah, it's probably easily worth it. If you're famous enough that your reputation matters that much and someone might want to pretend to be you, $20/month to protect it is likely a drop in the bucket and a no brainer to you.

After reading this yesterday, I'm seeing why Musk is doing what he's doing. He pretty much got Jack's stamp of approval.

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

Just monetize everything, Elon. Twitter was already dying anyway, so this'll just push it off the cliff faster. It'll probably get flooded with porn like certain other social media apps...

 

[Beau Knows]

I guess it's $8 a month now? He's definitely not making this up as he goes along.

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

I guess it's $8 a month now? He's definitely not making this up as he goes along.

Elon is proof that having a ton of money doesn't make you smart. He spent 44b on a whim and now has to save a sinking ship.

 

[pistolpete11]

Thing is polls and research show that very few people will pay for social media accounts. As the article I posted states, only about 400,000 people ever got the blue checkmarks and some are predicting that maybe 1/4 of them would pay the $20 a month to keep it. That would be about $24M a year, give or take, in revenue with is nothing when you consider they make in the billions of $ from advertising.

Also don't forget his purchase of the company also loaded them up with a ton of new debt as part of the deal, not including the debt he took on with the purchase. Right now banks are going to hold on to $13B in debt but not next year before they try and sell it to investors. The companies interest burden was $51M last year and with this new debt will be closer to $1B.

So ya, the future of this company is not stable at all and Musk might not be the savior some seem to think he is.

Even if this estimate is true, how many of the other 3/4 will just stop using Twitter entirely, though? Advertisers only care about how many active users there are (which is an entirely different problem Twitter has), not how many of them are blue checks.

 

[pistolpete11]

I guess it's $8 a month now? He's definitely not making this up as he goes along.

Not even saying he's wrong, but....man, rich people are so cheap

People want athletes to give their team a hometown discount and leave millions of dollars on the table. Here, we have a 75 year old man with a net worth of $500M and he's turning his nose up at paying $20 a month

 

[Beau Knows]

Not even saying he's wrong, but....man, rich people are so cheap

People want athletes to give their team a hometown discount and leave millions of dollars on the table. Here, we have a 75 year old man with a net worth of $500M and he's turning his nose up at paying $20 a month