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· Posted on
February 21, 2024

Twitter employees? You're cut. Fee for verified account? You may have to pay for that privilege.

Twitter's verified blue-tick badges may now become available to anybody who pays for it.

What's the key learning?

  • Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, he has fired the company's executives, board of directors, sugested a re-boot of Vine, and now he's planning to make the verified blue-tick badges available for a price.
  • Verification has always been a key part of Twitter's value proposition and is now considered to be an elite status symbol, despite originally being a way to prove authenticity of users.
  • If anybody and everybody can buy the blue tick, it may just become as worthless as dogecoin.

👉 Background: Twitter is the social media site famous known for giving a voice to anyone with a particularly strong opinion. Think: journalists, investors, celebs and everyday people who consider themselves thought-leaders.

👉 What happened: Back in April this year, Elon Musk offered $44 billion USD to acquire the whole of Twitter. Since he took ownership last week, he has:

  • Fired the Twitter CEO, CFO and Legal Affairs and Policy Chief
  • Fired the whole Twitter board of directors
  • Suggested a re-boot of short-form video platform Vine

👉 What else: And now, “verified” blue-tick badges may become available to anybody...who pays for it. And yes, this puts into question the whole idea of verified users.

What's the key learning?

💡Verification has always been a key part of Twitter’s value proposition. Although blue ticks are now considered an elite status symbol, they actually originated to prove authenticity of users.

💡Back in 2009, Twitter was struggling with major impersonation issues. And quickly after, the blue tick was brought in to establish authenticity of identities. As well as help Twitter uses discover high quality sources of information.

💡There are about 400,000 verified users on Twitter out of around 230 million Twitter users (less than 0.2% of all Twitter users). But if anybody and everybody can buy the blue tick, it may just become as worthless as dogecoin. And so may Twitter.

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