Twitter has already suggested version payment, before the arrival of Elon Musk at the head of the company. However, the new owner wants to offer a more expensive subscription that will give access to other benefits, including the blue badge that is currently office account verification. As our colleagues at The Verge explain, Twitter already launched this new $7.99 iOS subscription in November of this year. But the network social quickly pulled in car the new subscription caused havoc on the platform. Indeed, many fake accounts have appeared, but with a blue confirmation icon (because they paid for a subscription that gives access to this icon). Among the victims of impersonation is the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. A fake Eli Lilly account, complete with a verification badge, announced, “We are happy to announce that insulin is now free.” “We apologize to those who received a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account is @LillyPad,” the company later wrote on the current official account.
We apologize to those who received a misleading message from a fake Lilly account. Our official Twitter account @LillyPad. — Eli Lilly and company (@LillyPad) November 10, 2022
New launch date
After the completely failed launch of the new Twitter Blue subscription, the company has already admitted the mistake. However, the idea has not been abandoned. And this week, Elon Musk is announcing a new launch date for this new Twitter Blue offering. In his post, he says a restart is planned for Nov. 29 to make sure everything is “safe.” Note that Musk calls this new subscription “Blue Verified.” And he also clarifies that he will soon need to subscribe to this subscription in order to have a blue badge. “All old unpaid blue checkmarks 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 changing their name. Elon Musk points out that after changing the name, the user loses son badge and restores it only after the company checks the new name (it remains to be seen if Twitter has enough employees to carry out these checks).
Will Twitter be able to appease advertisers?
It looks like Elon Musk is making Twitter’s new paid offering a priority. Indeed, a monthly paid subscription would allow the platform to be less dependent on advertising revenue and therefore advertisers. However, in the meantime, Twitter still has a huge need for these advertisers, which are the main source of income. And the problem is that recent events have caused some companies to pause their advertising campaigns on the platform. According to The Verge, in a memo, Omnicom recommends that its customers (which include McDonald’s, Apple and PepsiCo) stop advertising on Twitter. Why ? The document explains to Omnicom customers that recent developments on Twitter may have implications for brands displaying ads there. “We recommend suspending activity on Twitter in the short term until the platform demonstrates that it has restored protection to an acceptable level and regained control of son environment”, will be read on also in this note.
