Twitter: The blue tick is gone, the chaos continues – Economy

Of course it had to happen on April 20th. The date, 4/20 in US spelling, includes Elon Musk’s favorite number: 420, which is a code word for cannabis use in the US. Musk took over Twitter for $54.20 per share and once proposed taking his company Tesla public for a share price of $420. So it was a special day for the Twitter boss, and Musk celebrated it in his own way.

Late Thursday evening German time, around 420,000 accounts lost their blue tick on Twitter – a number that Musk should like, but in this case it is actually a coincidence. Twitter marked companies, celebrities, politicians or journalists with the symbol. The blue tick meant: We have verified the identity of the person behind this account.

Musk repeatedly complained about the verification system, calling it “corrupt” or “bullshit”. Twitter has allegedly created a two-class society. The primary purpose of the process was to prevent pranksters or criminals from impersonating a well-known person and creating confusion on their behalf. Over the years, users have learned: Verification stands for authenticity, a supposed celebrity without a blue tick is usually a fake.

The blue tick still exists

But Twitter doesn’t leave it at simply removing all the hooks. The symbol still exists, but means something else. In the future it will be: This account pays around ten euros per month for TwitterBlue. Those who take out a subscription get, among other things, greater reach, can write up to 10,000 characters per tweet instead of 280, and see less advertising. Twitter Blue and the verification symbol coexisted for a while, but now all hook owners are out as paying customers.

This is a red rag for many people. Instructions have been circulating for the past few weeks to automatically block all Blue subscribers. The reason given is that anyone who pays for Twitter, and thus indirectly for Musk, cannot be taken seriously. “Finally we are all the same and the assholes are easy to recognize again”, says Jan Böhmermannwhich now also comes along without a hook.

Regardless of what subscribing to Twitter says about the character, Böhmermann is wrong. Some prominent users kept their blue tick, although they don’t pay for Blue, including LeBron James, Stephen King and William Shatner. All three had previously messed with Musk and announced they were guaranteed not to subscribe. Musk now appears to be taking revenge by throwing the three sponsors the subscription – and thus publicly gave the impression that even his critics paid for Twitter Blue.

So far, Twitter Blue has been a flop

To add to the confusion, there are different colored symbols. Gray ticks are free and indicate members of government, ministries or embassies. Gold stands for verified organizations that pay just under 1000 euros per month for it. However, there are exceptions: The 500 largest advertisers and the 10,000 organizations with the most followers are allowed to keep their free golden hooks. For outsiders it is not clear who belongs to this illustrious community and who pays.

Musk wants to make Twitter more independent of advertising with the payment model. Almost three quarters of Twitter’s most important advertisers have stopped their bookings, sales with ads has broken in. So far the plan hasn’t worked out. according to estimates Around 600,000 people pay for Twitter Blue, which corresponds to around one percent of Twitter’s sales last year. In order to be fully financed by Blue, Twitter would need around 50 million customers – or multi-billionaire Musk would simply pay for a few more subscriptions out of his own pocket.


source site