Twitter already offered a paid version, before the arrival of Elon Musk at the head of the company. However, the new owner wants to offer a more expensive subscription, but which will give access to other advantages, including the blue badge which currently acts as verification for accounts.
As our colleagues from The Verge explain, this November, Twitter has already launched this new $7.99 subscription on iOS. But the social network quickly retracted, because the new subscription had caused chaos on the platform.
Indeed, many fake accounts but equipped with the blue verification badge (since they had paid for the subscription giving access to this badge) have appeared. Among the victims of impersonation is the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.
A fake Eli Lilly account, equipped with the verification badge, announced: “we are delighted to announce that insulin is now freenext.”
“We apologize to those who received a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad”had later written the company, on the real official account.
We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad.
— Eli Lilly and Company (@LillyPad) November 10, 2022
A new launch date
Following the completely failed launch of the new Twitter Blue subscription, the company has already admitted to having made a mistake. However, the idea is not abandoned.
And this week, Elon Musk is announcing a new launch date for this new Twitter Blue offering. In his post, he says the relaunch is scheduled for November 29, to make sure everything is “rock solid.”
Note that Musk calls this new subscription “Blue Verified”. And he also specifies that it will soon be necessary to subscribe to this subscription to have the blue badge. “All old unpaid blue ticks will be removed in a few months”he wrote.
To avoid further chaos on Twitter, the platform will no longer allow people to keep their blue badges after a name change. Elon Musk indicates that after a name change, the user loses his badge and only recovers it after verification of the new name by the company (it remains to be seen whether Twitter still has enough staff to do these verifications ).
Will Twitter succeed in reassuring advertisers?
It looks like Elon Musk is making Twitter’s new paid offering a priority. Indeed, monthly paid subscriptions would allow the platform to depend less on advertising revenue and therefore on advertisers.
However, in the meantime, Twitter still has a huge need for these advertisers, who are the main source of income. And the problem is that recent events have caused some companies to suspend their advertising campaigns on the platform.
According to The Verge, in a memo, agency Omnicom recommends that its customers (which include McDonald’s, Apple and PepsiCo) suspend ads on Twitter. Why ? The document would explain to Omnicom customers that recent events on Twitter may have implications for brands displaying ads there.
“We recommend suspending activity on Twitter in the short term until the platform can demonstrate that it has reintroduced protections to an acceptable level and has regained control of its environment”we would also read in this note.
