Alright, we get it, Twitter’s in a pretty bad spot right now, but this? Come on Elon. Well, maybe we can’t really blame Musk for this one, after all, he didn’t choose to have to shoulder the burden of overhauling a company that was presumably bloated and entitled by the dot-com era. That being said, even though Musk has proven to be a capable businessman, questionable practices aside, we don’t think his latest decision is the way to go.

Verified Views?

This week, more users have started noticing a new ‘Verified Views’ counter appearing on their Tweets. What on Earth can these be? How do you even verify a view? From what we know so far, they appear to be nothing more than a regular Tweet counter, just under a different name. However, somewhere down the line, Musk has flagged a counter for interactions from only verified users – i.e paying Blue subscribers.

Long story short, Musk wants to bring it to a point where almost everyone can afford their $ 8-a-month Blue checkmark to effectively dilute the impact and presence of bots; if you have the Blue tick, then you’re likely a real person. On that note, Twitter’s relying on what it currently dubs as ‘Payment Verification’, since bots can’t pay nor can any bot provider afford to verify millions of fake accounts. If Twitter can get the vast majority to sign-up, that could work, but let’s face it, there’s no way Twitter can pull that off, not in this decade, at least. After all, people simply wouldn’t pay for an otherwise free-to-use platform; if they had to, then they’d likely go to the nearest alternatives.

This paid verification scheme is, so far, Musk’s worst idea yet. While there is some logic behind the initiative, the cons far too outweigh the pros. Even professional insights infer that users just aren’t going to pay to use Twitter. Other platforms have tried the same route, like, say, YouTube. The thing that they got right was offering small upgrades that users didn’t really need, but couldn’t get otherwise, such as YouTube’s ad-free ‘Premium’ subscription, and Snapchat’s ‘Snapchat+’. Despite that, the take-up rate for both options is still low, given the relative size of their entire audience bases.

There are currently around 325k active Twitter Blue subscribers, which is around 0.14% of the total number of Twitter users. To get Blue to the level where ‘Verified Views’ would be relevant is to have at least 70% of its user base signed up, which is a huge ask. If Twitter can at least get a million Blue subscribers, then that would bring in an extra $24 million per quarter; not enough to stop the bleeding, but would definitely be a big help. On another front, Twitter’s also developing verified user-only polls to highlight real interactions in the app.

The Wrap

While not great ideas, these aren’t completely useless – stats do show that a very small percentage of users actually buy into Musk’s offers, mostly for that ‘premium experience’ appeal. The takeaway here is that if Musk wants to incentivize take-up, then he must offer real premium service, not just colored check marks and the ability to edit Tweets. Twitter needs to double down on what it can offer people that they’ll be happy to pay for. If it can manage to do that, then it may still have the chance to again spread its wings.

Sources

http://bit.ly/3WHoTRA