Twitter-Boss Elon Musk (51) keeps pushing the tube to make the short message service profitable. With a tough wave of layoffs, he lowered the costs. Additional money should come in now.
Here’s how: From April 1st, the free blue tick symbols for verified profiles will be removed. If you want to keep the sign, you have to pay eight euros a month for the recently introduced “Twitter Blue” subscription.
The golden catch for companies and organizations is much more expensive: you have to pay 950 euros per month. 50 euros are added for each connected account – such as subpages or employees. The bottom line is often more than 1000 euros!
Facebook copies the Musk method
After Musk, the Facebook group Meta also discovered that money can be made with the “Verified” tick. Mark Zuckerberg (38) copied Twitter’s method for his Instagram and Facebook platforms.
Background: The advertising revenue for the social networks had recently fallen sharply. Among others because Apple took new privacy measures on the iPhone. These require app developers to explicitly ask users for permission to track advertising personalization data across services.
▶︎ Many users reject this. As a result, advertising revenue plummeted.
Twitter used to give its verification ticks to celebrities, politicians and journalists for free. Musk claimed after buying the service last fall that the previous procurement process was “corrupt.”
He had repeatedly announced that the old ticks should be phased out over time. Several owners of the previous symbols reported a warning in their profiles that they had to subscribe in order not to lose the tick.
Twitter did not provide any information on when the old symbols should be completely gone. Inquiries to the Twitter press office email address only received a response with a feces emoji. Musk had dissolved the press department.
