Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner. announced Twitter’s relaunch after facing criticism on the recent features of the application. For a subscription of $8 per month to Twitter Blue, anyone can now get certified with a blue tick. The launch of this program resulted in a slew of fake profiles that caused quite a stir, leading to it being shut down rapidly and relaunched. This checks out as one of the most shambolic strategies made by the company, as several users paid the fee and started impersonating Twitter accounts of various celebrities and companies. Hence, the CEO of Tesla has decided to roll out some new features to combat the chaos.
Musk has currently paused the process of relaunching to avoid Apple’s 30% fee. “Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week”, Musk tweeted. However, the relaunch hasn’t taken place yet and the date remains unclear. Twitter will no longer offer Blue subscriptions as an in-app purchase on the Twitter iPhone app when it relaunches. In any case, Musk has confirmed that blue ticks would be applied to everyone, including public figures, politicians, journalists, and celebrities. This will include a manual authenticated verification to attain the marks. However, it has not elaborated on what manual authentication would entail. The company has also decided on color-coding the metrics of the game by providing a gold tick to companies, while the government will receive a grey tick. There is no such detail revealed on any additional fee for the two checkmarks yet.
In a tweet, he mentioned, “All verified individual humans will have the same blue check, as the boundary of what constitutes “notable” is otherwise too subjective. Individuals can have a secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org.” After earning the blue tick, Twitter Blue subscribers won’t be able to modify their username or display name. The platform would shortly provide a new procedure for any username modifications. In another tweet, he said he would be “punting” the relaunch to the new date “to make sure that it is rock solid.”
To avoid the spam and fraud that surfaced globally causing havoc on the internet, Musk had previously mentioned that Twitter Blue accounts will be given priority in replies, mentions, and searches with the liberty to upload longer video and audio clips, where advertisements will be reduced. Users will be able to experience a more customised nuance of the application where they can delete tweets, bookmark folders, create app icons, change navigations and themes, use a reader, and add top articles. These features are most likely to be rolled out first on iOS, and then on Android.
Previously users were given an update that allowed editing their already posted tweets within a window of 30 minutes. This was done to give users a chance to fix typos, add missing media files, and include hashtags that might have been missed. These edited Tweets will include a timestamp with an icon and label indicating that you are not seeing the original version. Tapping the label will reveal the edit history of all past versions of the tweet. This strategy was done to enhance the integrity of the platform, which is publicly accessible to all, but the recent update gave away its use.
Existing users will have the blue tick where they still have to pay the 8-dollar subscription fee. For new users, receiving a blue tick will now need up to 90 days for the verification process, which would reduce instantaneous fraud.
After the billionaire took over Twitter in a $44 billion deal that he proposed, then tried to cancel, then proposed again, Twitter’s workforce has been in chaos. After the layoff, he slashed the workforce further by half, and then delivered an ultimatum to remaining employees to commit to a “hardcore” Twitter or leave. A cloud of uncertainty hovers over the company and its CEO. This has led to people holding Elon Musk solely accountable for Twitter’s many missteps, with many marketers pausing their spending on Twitter as Musk’s changes resulted in a rise of hateful rhetoric and brand impersonators. However, according to Prof. Calkins of the Kellogg School of Management, Twitter received an incredible amount of publicity since Musk’s acquisition. “And in many ways, that’s great news for Twitter, because now people are thinking about Twitter for the first time in a
very long time,” he said. The number of average active daily users increased to
237.8 million in the second quarter of the year from 229 million.
Twitter Blue is currently available on iOS only in some countries including, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK with plans to expand further. Even though Twitter Blue wasn’t announced officially in India, some users are said to have signed up with a subscription fee of Rs. 719 per month. The monetisation of Twitter has unlocked a new interest in the users, which may or may not have been foreseen by people across the world. It remains to be seen how high the microblogging platform soars after making these changes.
