Twitter announced on Saturday that it will begin charging customers $7.99 a month to receive a verification check mark on their profiles, one of the many product changes the company has announced. discussed since Elon Musk took over more than a week ago.
Notice has been included in Note comes with a new update to the Twitter app appearing in Apple’s App Store. The notes explain that the paid verification system is now a feature of the site’s subscription service, Twitter Blue.
“Power to the people,” the announcement said. “Your account will get a blue check mark, just like the celebrities, companies, and politicians you follow.”
To finance his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Musk loaded the company with $13 billion in debt, which comes with more than $1 billion in interest payments each year. That has put Twitter under enormous pressure to cut costs and increase revenue. This week, Twitter lay off about half of the company’s workforce, or about 3,700 jobs.
In addition to charging verification fees, Mr. Musk and his advisers have weigh More ideas to bring in more revenue, from placing certain videos behind a paid wall to reviving Vine, the now defunct short-form video platform.
The update note published on Saturday also promises that subscribers will get other benefits, including “half the ads and much better ones,” as well as the ability to post longer videos. on Twitter.
And in one a bunch of tweets On Saturday, Mr Musk said that the company was working on an update that would give users the ability to attach long-form text to tweets, which he said would remove “the absurdity of snapshots”. notepad screen.”
But the change to Twitter’s signature verification system has been particularly controversial. Previously, the company manually assigned a blue circle with a white check mark to famous figures and businesses. With the midterm elections approaching on Tuesday, some election integrity advocates have spoken out. fear that the new paid verification system could make it easier for bad guys to impersonate political candidates or other public figures.
The update notes do not discuss any steps Twitter can take to prevent impersonation. But asked on Twitter Mr. Musk said on Saturday how he would deal with that, that the company would suspend the impostors and keep their funds. “If scammers want to do this a million times, it’s just a bunch of free money,” he said.
