Twitter Blue is dead, 'official' checkmarks resurrected
Twitter has now seemingly abandoned its $8 per month Twitter Blue subscription, and also revived the "official" tag that Elon Musk created, then killed within hours.
Neither Twitter nor Elon Musk have either announced the end of Twitter Blue, nor commented beyond a cryptic tweet about November 11, 2022, being "Quite the day!"
Twitter Blue was an existing subscription service that Musk expanded on November 10, 2022. During its apparently 24 hours of existence, anyone could get one of Twitter's "Verified" marks for the price of subscribing.
It inevitably and instantly led to spamming with fake accounts. Musk seemed to welcome the spammers, too, saying that Twitter would ban them -- after taking their $8.
Most of the workers in teams that would be expected to take down fake accounts have been fired or have quit. Nonetheless, fake accounts purporting to be politicians were removed, as was one claiming to be the official support for Apple TV+.
At the same time, some users -- mostly advertisers -- are regaining the grey "Official" tag that was briefly brought out to replace the now tarnished "Verified." Elon Musk explicitly said after a few hours that he had killed off "Official" -- his words -- but it is now resurfacing.
As yet, "official" is only appearing on a few accounts. So the Pepsi Twitter account is marked as "official," but Apple is not.
This "official" tag did go some way toward replacing the original purpose of Twitter's verification. It couldn't be bought as part of a subscription, it was in some way ascribed to genuine accounts, although Twitter never explained how.
It meant that genuine companies and celebrities could get tagged as official without paying for it. However, that took away the legitimate market for a blue verification icon, leaving only spammers who would see value in paying the $8 fee.
Consequently, the only thing that was initially more surprising than Musk killing off the official tag was that it ever existed. Now it's back, while Twitter Blue can no longer be signed up for.
It's not known whether people who have paid their $8 for the first month will revert to the old-style Twitter blue for their next billing period. Also not clear is why Twitter didn't retain the blue checkmark for verified accounts, and implement a different color or shape for the paid subscriptions.
Read on AppleInsider
Neither Twitter nor Elon Musk have either announced the end of Twitter Blue, nor commented beyond a cryptic tweet about November 11, 2022, being "Quite the day!"
Twitter Blue was an existing subscription service that Musk expanded on November 10, 2022. During its apparently 24 hours of existence, anyone could get one of Twitter's "Verified" marks for the price of subscribing.
It inevitably and instantly led to spamming with fake accounts. Musk seemed to welcome the spammers, too, saying that Twitter would ban them -- after taking their $8.
Elon in a Twitter space right now: "If someone tries to impersonate a brand, we will get rid of them and we will keep their $8. And they can keep doing that and we will do it again."
-- Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__)
Most of the workers in teams that would be expected to take down fake accounts have been fired or have quit. Nonetheless, fake accounts purporting to be politicians were removed, as was one claiming to be the official support for Apple TV+.
At the same time, some users -- mostly advertisers -- are regaining the grey "Official" tag that was briefly brought out to replace the now tarnished "Verified." Elon Musk explicitly said after a few hours that he had killed off "Official" -- his words -- but it is now resurfacing.
As yet, "official" is only appearing on a few accounts. So the Pepsi Twitter account is marked as "official," but Apple is not.
This "official" tag did go some way toward replacing the original purpose of Twitter's verification. It couldn't be bought as part of a subscription, it was in some way ascribed to genuine accounts, although Twitter never explained how.
It meant that genuine companies and celebrities could get tagged as official without paying for it. However, that took away the legitimate market for a blue verification icon, leaving only spammers who would see value in paying the $8 fee.
Consequently, the only thing that was initially more surprising than Musk killing off the official tag was that it ever existed. Now it's back, while Twitter Blue can no longer be signed up for.
It's not known whether people who have paid their $8 for the first month will revert to the old-style Twitter blue for their next billing period. Also not clear is why Twitter didn't retain the blue checkmark for verified accounts, and implement a different color or shape for the paid subscriptions.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
- Also not clear is why Twitter didn't retain the blue checkmark for verified accounts, and implement a different color or shape for the paid subscriptions.
Right? Dead simple solution but Elon's crazed fever mind couldn't come up with it.One for each color. I like JL to be representing the blue one….
New Twitter: Pivots multiple times in a week from day 1 to verify what works and what doesn't.
I'll take New Twitter every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Strange article though. Making official statements on things that have not been communicated is odd. Twitter was a mess and needs a LOT of overhaul. These feature tests aren't going away anytime soon. Twitter is coming up with great ideas and then reading the room.
Instead of acting like an old, crusty telecom or Microsoft, it has trimmed the fat and acting like a startup - a lean, mean freedom of speech machine. Just because it made a decision doesn't mean it has to stick with it if it was the wrong one, no matter how right it seemed in the boardroom. They are reading the room and responding quickly - something universally recognized as a good thing. Some people are just mad because they wanted to bash the decision forever. and then get upset that their little target for hate has been removed. It's hilarious.
Twitter is finally in the hands of someone who is not only a very capable and hugely successful businessman, but someone with vision, enthusiasm, and a drive to be a unifying factor for freedom over the draconian political hitmen of yesterday.
Looking forward to what is next.
Then he thought common folks would pay to be verified, but not that many common people are interested enough to have their account verified: no one besides friends and family and business acquaintances would care, and they already know! Not to mention that a purchased Blue Tick diminishes the value of the real, coveted, Blue Tick. But if he had left the Blue Tick as is, and just introduced a new, say, green tick that is available for purchase, no one would buy that green tick - would you?
For years I’ve wondered if people would pay to use Facebook if it eliminated all the ads and tracking. Some friends of mine, a couple, claim they would pay to use Facebook. I’m not sure I believe that. Your “green tick” example likely falls into the same category as paying for Facebook. I really can’t see there’s enough value to individuals that they would pay to use Twitter or get a green tick. I certainly wouldn’t.
Not chief twit, chief twat.
I wonder what sort of liability Musk has assumed by admitting he's fine with collecting $8 from "verified" fake accounts before getting rid of them, and then an $8 "verified" fake account immediately causes Eli Lilly stock to shed $20B before Musk got a chance to 'get rid of it?' I have to think that this little tidbit is probably of central note in the lawsuit Eli Lilly's house counsel is drawing up just about now.
Twitter has the potential to be the one-stop social media shop. but it needs more features. I imagine that's what Tesla, Spacex, and Starlink engineers were doing there. long form video library feature would be amazing as would short and long form live stream capabilities. Tik Tok would be toast and so would Facebook. Twitter has used so many resources for so long without doing hardly anything. Hosting a tiny amount of text and some light video/images. Can leverage those resources to do real work now. People pay for services like Vimeo Pro. They'd gladly pay for. full service shop, which is what Twitter Blue should be - free twitter should stay very similar to now - Twitter Blue should enable instant verification, long form text posts and short form video libraries, a la tik tok/Vine - from there, a separate tier would be. Twitter Blue Plus or something like that would extend features to include long form video libraries and live streaming. Small businesses, churches, etc. would go crazy for something like that. Build web APIs to make it a no brainer for news networks, etc. to embed, utilize, web developers to integrate, plugins, etc. It would e huge.
We will see how this goes.
Sane people - Doing nothing is better than doing nonsensical things.