Twitter’s new “Twitter Blue” membership service is scheduled to go live next week; failure to do so will result in employee termination. Elon Musk’s company plans to charge $20 per month for the coveted blue check marks.
Elon Musk has given engineers a deadline for a new project just days after seizing control of Twitter.
Musk intends to introduce a pay-for-play verification system in which verified users are required to pay $20 each month, according to a story from The Verge.
The worst part is that engineers must implement the plan by November 7 or risk losing their jobs. The initiative was only announced to the staff on October 30.
The cost of the verification is reportedly subject to vary, according to the Verge story. Unspecified additional features will also be included in the pricing.
The world’s richest man has made it obvious that he intends to make changes at the social media behemoth ever since he initially sought to buy Twitter.
Hours before The Verge report emerged, Musk tweeted: ‘The whole verification process is being revamped right now.’
Earlier, Casey Newton of the tech website Platformer said that Twitter was considering charging verified users for the privilege.
Twitter has been contacted by DailyMail.com for comment on this story.
On Twitter, there are around 400,000 verified users. Making them pay could help the platform stay solvent in light of claims that only 10% of monthly users are “strong tweeters” and that bots make up 5% of all users.
Less engaged users mean fewer potential customers for advertisers. Musk himself asserted during the legal struggle to buy Twitter that the vast majority of advertisements are visible to no more than 16 million users.
Musk has also refuted a New York Times story accusing the Tesla-founder of planning a series of layoffs before November 1, in order to avoid paying staff their annual stock grants.
In responding to ProPublica’s Eric Umansky tweeting the Times story, Musk simply wrote: ‘This is false.’
Later, Musk took further aim at the newspaper of record in tweeting a screenshot of a headline from NYTimes.com accusing him of posting a link to fake story surrounding the assault on Paul Pelosi.
The headline read: ‘Elon Musk, in a Tweet, Shares Link From Site Known to Publish Fake News.’
Musk quipped: ‘This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to the New York Times.’
