Elon Musk to introduce $20 a month charge for blue-check on Twitter

Twitter engineers have just days to make it happen

Elon Musk has reportedly issued an ultimatum to Twitter engineers over a new verification project that involves charging uses more money. According to The Verge, Musk wants to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, at a cost of $20 a month. Engineers at the social media platform were told of the plan on October 30, but have to make it happen by November 7, or be fired, the publisher said. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. In the months leading up to the acquisition, signed Friday, Musk had been clear that he wanted to revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots. On Sunday, he tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.” Platformer’s Casey Newton first reported that Twitter was considering charging for verification. Twitter has not commented on the reports. Twitter is said to have close to 400,000 verified users. Making them pay could help the platform stay afloat after reports suggested that bots make up five per cent of all users and "heavy tweeters" make up less than 10 per cent of the site's monthly users. Less active users mean less eyeballs for advertisers. Twitter Blue launched almost a year ago as a way to view ad-free articles from some publishers and make other tweaks to the app, such as a different colour home screen icon. In the few quarters that Twitter reported earnings as a public company after that debut, advertising remained the vast majority of its revenue. Musk is keen on growing subscriptions to become half of the company’s overall revenue. During the court battle to acquire Twitter, Musk claimed that fewer than 16 million users are able to see the vast majority of ads. Musk is just days into the job but has already fired top execs, and changed its homepage for logged out users. With the help of Tesla engineers he has brought into Twitter as advisors, he’s also planning mass layoffs aimed at middle managers and engineers who haven’t recently contributed to the code base. Those cuts are expected to begin this week with managers already creating lists of employees to cut. Related links:

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