Everything has been confusion, drama and chaos in Twitter since Elon Musk took the reins at the end of October. In addition to the controversial layoffs, the massive resignations, the exodus of users to other social networks, the billionaire has another pending disaster: Twitter Blue.
At the beginning of November, the businessman announced that any user could have their ‘blue tick’ for verification by paying $8. Fake profiles quickly proliferated, impersonating companies, government entities, and high-profile individuals, among others.
To differentiate them, they tried adding a second gray check mark and the word “official” under the name of the previously authenticated users, but it wasn’t enough. For this reason, Elon Musk decided to go back and suspend Twitter Blue on November 11. Although he promised to relaunch it on the 29th of the same month, his recent statements make it clear that this will not be the case.
Elon Musk puts the brakes (again) on his account verification system
It appears that the Tesla CEO and his team have yet to figure out how to implement account authentication and payment service in an orderly and consistent manner.
“Blue Verified relaunch is postponed until there is a high level of confidence in stopping phishing,” the 51-year-old mogul wrote on Twitter.
He also disclosed that ‘official’ profile badge will no longer be bluebut it will have a different color depending on the type of user.
“We will probably use different colors on the checkmark for organizations and for individuals,” Elon Musk added in the same tweet.
In another postexpressed his confidence that all this disorder will be temporary and will result in a stronger relationship with Internet users.
“Over time, as we get closer to the truth, Twitter will earn more and more people’s trust,” the father of nine wrote.
Why all the fuss?
The debacle began on November 8, when the businessman announced that he would charge $8 for the blue badge. Of course, the new Twitter Blue plan unleashed a wave of discontent and even the “King of Terror” himself, Stephen Kingconfronted Musk.
In addition, the social network was flooded with accounts that ‘bought’ the badge to impersonate politicians, businessmen, celebrities and brands.
Twitter became a nightmare for companies like Nintendo, nestle, Pepsi and the pharmacist Eli Lillythat lost 15 billion dollars for a fake tweet. There were even apocryphal accounts with check blue posing as Tesla, SpaceX and even for his own Elon Musk.
It should be remembered that before the billionaire bought the platform, it offered free identity verification for organizations and public figures. For its part, Twitter Blue was a paid service that provided benefits and exclusive features for subscribers. Maybe Musk saw that the combination of the two could be an opportunity to make the social network more profitable and less reliant on advertisers, but clearly they didn’t plan it well and only unleashed a mess.
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.