One of Elon Musk’s first tasks as the new owner of Twitter is to charge users $19.99 a month for its Twitter Blue subscription, paired with the “Blue Tick” user verification.
The Verge’s report is based on sources familiar with the matter, internal correspondence and a tweet from Musk himself on Sunday, saying, “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.”
Verified users will have 90 days to subscribe or lose the blue checkmark, which informs viewers Twitter has ascertained the identification of the person or entity on the platform.
Twitter currently charges $4.99 a month for its Twitter Blue subscription, which unlocks additional services besides the Blue checkmark, such as being able to edit or undo a tweet.
Musk has given employees working on the project a deadline of Nov. 7, 2022 to complete it — or they will be fired, The Verge says. They began work immediately when Musk completed his aquisition last Thursday, Oct. 27 and continued into the weekend.
Leading up to his acquisition, Musk had indicated he would revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and eliminates bots, or spam.
Musk, self-proclaimed “Chief Twit,” is said to be planning mass layoffs starting with engineers and mid-tier executives who have not recently contributed to the platform’s code. Managers reportedly are making lists of employees to cut, with the layoffs expected to begin this week.
The aim, at least initially, is to cut 25% of staff, The Washington Post reports.
Musk also reportedly is going to change the homepage for logged-out users and wants to use a different color for the home page icon.
Ever since Twitter launched its Twitter Blue subscription a year ago, advertising has been the main source of Twitter’s revenue — but Musk wants to expand subscriptions so that they make up half of Twitter’s revenue.
Musk also started a Twitter poll asking his 112 million followers if he should bring back the six-second app Vine, BBC reports. Twitter acquired Vine in 2012 but shelved the service in 2015, when it had a mere 200,000 active users.
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