Elon Says Revised $8 Twitter Blue ‘Verification’ Program Will Resume on November 29th

Elon Musk’s $8 Blue Ticks-for-all verification program, his first major user-focused initiative since acquiring the app, has caused a host of problems, including rampant impersonation, internal confusion over how to enforce the platform’s rules , and potential legal concerns , and even stock market implications for some impersonated companies.

Which is broadly consistent with what everyone was saying — even Twitter’s own staff, who briefed Musk of possible concerns ahead of the release.

But Musk kept pushing anyway, before finally agreeing to pause the rollout just days after launch due to the aforementioned issues.

Twitter then also added a new “official” tick to combat identity theft removes itthen added it again. Which is pretty indicative of the app’s current state — and now, with a few tweaks, Elon has set a new date for the relaunch of its $8 tick program:

Where the same problems will inevitably appear again unless there is a new process that z users in the app.

So far, it doesn’t seem like any of those elements are being considered for Musk.great leveler‘ program.

Musk sees Twitter’s blue ticks as a sort of status marker that separates “have” from “haven’t” on the app. And while I’m not sure if others see them that way, Musk seems to think that because of this, he can eventually convince millions of users to pay $96 a year for a badge in the app, which will be the case will then allow him to move on to the next phase of the plan by taking action against bot profiles – because with so many people signing up, the only ones without the blue tick will ultimately be all bots.

Even if, due to the current construction, there is no chance that this will work conceptually.

Because millions of people aren’t going to sign up to pay $8 a month for a tiny graphic next to their name, which means nothing at all once anyone can buy one.

Sure, some people will pay. Fans of Elon, those who have always wanted a blue tick — there’s a percentage of Twitter users who are clearly paying $8 for the blue tick. According to reports, 140,000 Twitter users signed up for the program in the first few days it was available, which is more than the number of users who signed up for Twitter Blue (100,000), the platform’s first subscription offering.

That’s promising, isn’t it? 140,000 registrations in a few days. This shows that Elon is likely betting on a winner. Right?

The thing is, 140,000 is 0.06% of Twitter’s total user base. That’s still a lot in just a few days, but it’s nowhere near the amount Elon would need to facilitate this next step, using this as a way to ping bot profiles against real people via in-app ticks to identify.

It’s also not enough to fulfill Elon’s plan to make subscriptions 50% of Twitter’s revenue.

Twitter brought in $1.18 billion in revenue in the second quarter, which means Elon needs to make at least $590 million per quarter from subscriptions to meet its goal. That equates to roughly 24.6 million paying subscribers who signed up for its $8 verification plan. That’s a lot — again, the original Twitter Blue only ever had 100,000 signups, and while 140,000 new subscribers in just a few days, in limited release, seems like a positive, it essentially needs 175x that to even hit its 50% revenue mark. to reach .

And for it to work as a marker for bots vs. humans, it’s again much higher than that number. You would assume Musk would need about 75% of Twitter users (178 million) or possibly more to sign up for this to be a clear indicator of real people and fake.

I seriously doubt that 178 million people will pay to use the app when they could just use any other social app for free.

But then again, Elon may have new elements to be revealed that will sweeten the deal – although he’s threatened to do so too reduce the reach of non-paying Twitter users as a means of forcing people to pay.

But the majority of Twitter users never tweet anyway, so that probably won’t work either. But again, it’s impossible to judge until we see what’s next and what improvements Twitter plans to make ahead of the re-release.

Although there is:

As a reminder, Twitter blocked all verified users from changing their names last week in response to many people changing their usernames to poke fun at Musk specifically, along with other brands and celebrities.

As a measure to combat identity theft, Twitter will now implement a process to verify changed usernames before proceeding. It’s a good move that should address at least some of the recent identity theft issues — although it’s also interesting who exactly will be reviewing and approving this, considering Elon has fired the majority of Twitter employees and contractors.

In conclusion, I still don’t think Elon’s $8 tick program is the way to go, nor do I think anyone on Twitter thinks that is the case. But Elon has also made big announcements and proclamations surrounding the offer – I don’t see him backing down from that now.

That means Twitter’s verification system is likely to wreak even more havoc in a couple of weeks — but until then, we’ll have to put up with Musk’s indiscriminate public attacks on employees and collaborators self praisewhile familiarizing himself with the app.